Key reduction of a Chinese phonetic input method by minimizing message ambiguity

Nowadays, miniature electronic equipment requests fewer keys mapped by the phonetic symbols to efficiently implement the Chinese phonetic input method. We first propose calculation of the message ambiguity for the Chinese input method using a specific key mapping, defining the mapping between the keys and the phonetic symbols. Next, given the user requirements, including the numbers of phonetic symbols and keys, and some extra requirements, we propose a multi-stage hill-climbing algorithm to derive the key mapping with the minimal message ambiguity. The experimental results illustrate that the derived key mappings for various user requirements outperform the existing key mappings.