395 research outputs found
Modern Coding Theory: The Statistical Mechanics and Computer Science Point of View
These are the notes for a set of lectures delivered by the two authors at the
Les Houches Summer School on `Complex Systems' in July 2006. They provide an
introduction to the basic concepts in modern (probabilistic) coding theory,
highlighting connections with statistical mechanics. We also stress common
concepts with other disciplines dealing with similar problems that can be
generically referred to as `large graphical models'.
While most of the lectures are devoted to the classical channel coding
problem over simple memoryless channels, we present a discussion of more
complex channel models. We conclude with an overview of the main open
challenges in the field.Comment: Lectures at Les Houches Summer School on `Complex Systems', July
2006, 44 pages, 25 ps figure
How to Achieve the Capacity of Asymmetric Channels
We survey coding techniques that enable reliable transmission at rates that
approach the capacity of an arbitrary discrete memoryless channel. In
particular, we take the point of view of modern coding theory and discuss how
recent advances in coding for symmetric channels help provide more efficient
solutions for the asymmetric case. We consider, in more detail, three basic
coding paradigms.
The first one is Gallager's scheme that consists of concatenating a linear
code with a non-linear mapping so that the input distribution can be
appropriately shaped. We explicitly show that both polar codes and spatially
coupled codes can be employed in this scenario. Furthermore, we derive a
scaling law between the gap to capacity, the cardinality of the input and
output alphabets, and the required size of the mapper.
The second one is an integrated scheme in which the code is used both for
source coding, in order to create codewords distributed according to the
capacity-achieving input distribution, and for channel coding, in order to
provide error protection. Such a technique has been recently introduced by
Honda and Yamamoto in the context of polar codes, and we show how to apply it
also to the design of sparse graph codes.
The third paradigm is based on an idea of B\"ocherer and Mathar, and
separates the two tasks of source coding and channel coding by a chaining
construction that binds together several codewords. We present conditions for
the source code and the channel code, and we describe how to combine any source
code with any channel code that fulfill those conditions, in order to provide
capacity-achieving schemes for asymmetric channels. In particular, we show that
polar codes, spatially coupled codes, and homophonic codes are suitable as
basic building blocks of the proposed coding strategy.Comment: 32 pages, 4 figures, presented in part at Allerton'14 and published
in IEEE Trans. Inform. Theor
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