The invention is a method and system for compressing a current value into a minimum number of bits for transmission from a compressor to a decompressor. A method in accordance with the invention includes maintaining a series of at least one previous value at the compressor, each previous value having different k least significant bits and which have been transmitted to the decompressor; determining a value of k representing a smallest number of bits which allows successful decompression of the current value at the decompressor using as a reference value any value in the series of at least one previous value; and transmitting the current value from the compressor to the decompressor in compressed form with the k least significant bits of the current value.