Fountain codes for lossless data compression

This paper proposes a universal variable-length lossless compression algorithm based on fountain codes. The compressor concatenates the Burrows-Wheeler block sorting transform (BWT) with a fountain encoder, together with the closed-loop iterative doping algorithm. The decompressor uses a Belief Propagation algorithm in conjunction with the iterative doping algorithm and the inverse BWT. Linear-time compression/decompression complexity and competitive performance with respect to state-of-the-art compression algorithms are achieved.