Abstract
The importance of balanced q-ary codes is widely spread in the field of telecommunication
especially in magnetic and optical recording systems. Balanced q-ary codes play a major role
in detecting unidirectional errors, transmitting high power through cables, and reducing noises
in Very-Large-Scale-Integration (VLSI) design systems [17].
In this dissertation, we design a balanced coding scheme that has a simple encoder and decoder
based on the binary scheme proposed by Swart and Weber. We extend the binary variable-tofixed
length balancing scheme to a ternary case. Our scheme has no lookup tables.
Using the C++ coding, we generate data necessary to analyse our scheme. The redundancy and
complexity analysis are provided with the aim of analysing the efficiency of the proposed
scheme. The complexity analysis is given by analysing how the runtime of our scheme changes
as the block length 𝑛 gets bigger.
Furthermore, we compare our ternary variable-to-fixed length balancing scheme with the best
practical full set scheme. The most efficient fixed-length code contains all balanced sequences
of length 𝑛, with all sequences being equiprobable. We conclude the dissertation by comparing
our scheme with other coding schemes in terms of both complexity and redundancy. It was
found that our scheme traded off higher redundancy for a faster and simpler encoder/decoder.