Arduino: Lightweight compression algorithm to stor

Question

I want to store a large amount of data onto my Arduino with a ATmega168/ATmega328 microcontroller, but unfortunately there's only 256 KB / 512 KB of EEPROM storage.

My idea is to make use of an compression algorithm to strip down the size. But well, my knowledge on compression algorithms is quite low and my search for ready-to-use libraries failed.

So, is there a good way to optimize the storage size?

Answer 1

A NASA study here (Postscript)

A repost of 1989 article on LZW here

Keep it simple and perform analysis of the cost/payout of adding compression. This includes time and effort, complexity, resource usage, data compressibility, etc.

Answer 2

The method described in the paper “Data Compression Algorithms for Energy-Constrained Devices in Delay Tolerant Networks” might run on an ATmega328.

Reference: C. Sadler and M. Martonosi, “Data Compression Algorithms for Energy-Constrained Devices in Delay Tolerant Networks,” Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys) 2006, November 2006. .pdf. S-LZW Source for MSPGCC: slzw.tar.gz. Updated 10 March 2007.