Abstract: The systematic, and possibly repeated, acquisition of several distinct quantities for exploitation by a user system by utilizing a multiplexer with staged architecture without all inputs hard-wired. Each multiplexer stage is addressed by an elementary counter chained with elementary counters for addressing lower stages. The multiplexer inputs are scanned by regularly incrementing the chain of counters. If no precaution is taken, all the multiplexer inputs are scanned without considering their possible absences. To remedy this drawback a first elementary counter addresses the first stage of adjustable counting capacity switches, the elementary counters can address intermediate stages of the switches with controllable shunting circuits, and a global counter is reconfigured, at the end of each counting cycle of the first elementary counter, by commands adjusting the first elementary counter capacity, and activating or inhibiting the shunting circuits.

Abstract: An adaptive coding method is comprised of: a fourth step (508), (510) for calculating an occurrence frequency of either the more probable symbol (MPS) or the less probable symbol (LPS) with respective to the entered input; a fifth step (511) for comparing an occurrence time accumulated value calculated as the occurrence frequency at the fourth step with a preselected value (threshold value), and for reducing the occurrence time accumulated value by 1/2 in the case that the occurrence time accumulated value reaches the preselected value (threshold value); and a sixth step (513) for defining the more probable symbol (MPS) and the less probable symbol (LPS) in correspondence with a predetermined region on a numerical line with respect to the data signal to thereby output coordinate values on the numerical line as a corded word.