A unary error correction code for the near-capacity joint source and channel coding of symbol values from an infinite set

A novel Joint Source and Channel Code (JSCC) is proposed, which we refer to as the Unary Error Correction (UEC) code. Unlike existing JSCCs, our UEC facilitates the practical encoding of symbol values that are selected from a set having an infinite cardinality. Conventionally, these symbols are conveyed using Separate Source and Channel Codes (SSCCs), but we demonstrate that the residual redundancy that is retained following source coding results in a capacity loss, which is found to have a value of 1.11 dB in a particular practical scenario. By contrast, the proposed UEC code can eliminate this capacity loss, or reduce it to an infinitesimally small value. Furthermore, the UEC code has only a moderate complexity, facilitating its employment in practical low-complexity applications

Exploiting 2-Dimensional Source Correlation in Channel Decoding with Parameter Estimation

Traditionally, it is assumed that source coding is perfect and therefore, the redundancy of the source encoded bit-stream is zero. However, in reality, this is not the case as the existing source encoders are imperfect and yield residual redundancy at the output. The residual redundancy can be exploited by using Joint Source Channel Coding (JSCC) with Markov chain as the source. In several studies, the statistical knowledge of the sources has been assumed to be perfectly available at the receiver. Although the result was better in terms of the BER performance, practically, the source correlation knowledge were not always available at the receiver and thus, this could affect the reliability of the outcome. The source correlation on all rows and columns of the 2D sources were well exploited by using a modified Bahl-Cocke-Jelinek-Raviv (BCJR) algorithm in the decoder. A parameter estimation technique was used jointly with the decoder to estimate the source correlation knowledge. Hence, this research aims to investigate the parameter estimation for 2D JSCC system which reflects a practical scenario where the source correlation knowledge are not always available. We compare the performance of the proposed joint decoding and estimation technique with the ideal 2D JSCC system with perfect knowledge of the source correlation knowledge. Simulation results reveal that our proposed coding scheme performs very close to the ideal 2D JSCC system

Irregular Variable Length Coding

In this thesis, we introduce Irregular Variable Length Coding (IrVLC) and investigate its applications, characteristics and performance in the context of digital multimedia broadcast telecommunications. During IrVLC encoding, the multimedia signal is represented using a sequence of concatenated binary codewords. These are selected from a codebook, comprising a number of codewords, which, in turn, comprise various numbers of bits. However, during IrVLC encoding, the multimedia signal is decomposed into particular fractions, each of which is represented using a different codebook. This is in contrast to regular Variable Length Coding (VLC), in which the entire multimedia signal is encoded using the same codebook. The application of IrVLCs to joint source and channel coding is investigated in the context of a video transmission scheme. Our novel video codec represents the video signal using tessellations of Variable-Dimension Vector Quantisation (VDVQ) tiles. These are selected from a codebook, comprising a number of tiles having various dimensions. The selected tessellation of VDVQ tiles is signalled using a corresponding sequence of concatenated codewords from a Variable Length Error Correction (VLEC) codebook. This VLEC codebook represents a specific joint source and channel coding case of VLCs, which facilitates both compression and error correction. However, during video encoding, only particular combinations of the VDVQ tiles will perfectly tessellate, owing to their various dimensions. As a result, only particular sub-sets of the VDVQ codebook and, hence, of the VLEC codebook may be employed to convey particular fractions of the video signal. Therefore, our novel video codec can be said to employ IrVLCs. The employment of IrVLCs to facilitate Unequal Error Protection (UEP) is also demonstrated. This may be applied when various fractions of the source signal have different error sensitivities, as is typical in audio, speech, image and video signals, for example. Here, different VLEC codebooks having appropriately selected error correction capabilities may be employed to encode the particular fractions of the source signal. This approach may be expected to yield a higher reconstruction quality than equal protection in cases where the various fractions of the source signal have different error sensitivities. Finally, this thesis investigates the application of IrVLCs to near-capacity operation using EXtrinsic Information Transfer (EXIT) chart analysis. Here, a number of component VLEC codebooks having different inverted EXIT functions are employed to encode particular fractions of the source symbol frame. We show that the composite inverted IrVLC EXIT function may be obtained as a weighted average of the inverted component VLC EXIT functions. Additionally, EXIT chart matching is employed to shape the inverted IrVLC EXIT function to match the EXIT function of a serially concatenated inner channel code, creating a narrow but still open EXIT chart tunnel. In this way, iterative decoding convergence to an infinitesimally low probability of error is facilitated at near-capacity channel SNRs

Decoding the `Nature Encoded\u27 Messages for Wireless Networked Control Systems

Because of low installation and reconfiguration cost wireless communication has been widely applied in networked control system (NCS). NCS is a control system which uses multi-purpose shared network as communication medium to connect spatially distributed components of control system including sensors, actuator, and controller. The integration of wireless communication in NCS is challenging due to channel unreliability such as fading, shadowing, interference, mobility and receiver thermal noise leading to packet corruption, packet dropout and packet transmission delay. In this dissertation, the study is focused on the design of wireless receiver in order to exploit the redundancy in the system state, which can be considered as a `nature encoding\u27 for the messages. Firstly, for systems with or without explicit channel coding, a decoding procedures based on Pearl\u27s Belief Propagation (BP), in a similar manner to Turbo processing in traditional data communication systems, is proposed to exploit the redundancy in the system state. Numerical simulations have demonstrated the validity of the proposed schemes, using a linear model of electric generator dynamic system. Secondly, we propose a quickest detection based scheme to detect error propagation, which may happen in the proposed decoding scheme when channel condition is bad. Then we combine this proposed error propagation detection scheme with the proposed BP based channel decoding and state estimation algorithm. The validity of the proposed schemes has been shown by numerical simulations. Finally, we propose to use MSE-based transfer chart to evaluate the performance of the proposed BP based channel decoding and state estimation scheme. We focus on two models to evaluate the performance of BP based sequential and iterative channel decoding and state estimation. The numerical results show that MSE-based transfer chart can provide much insight about the performance of the proposed channel decoding and state estimation scheme. In this dissertation, the study is focused on the design of wireless receiver in order to exploit the redundancy in the system state, which can be considered as a `nature encoding\u27 for the messages. Firstly, for systems with or without explicit channel coding, a decoding procedures based on Pearl\u27s Belief Propagation (BP), in a similar manner to Turbo processing in traditional data communication systems, is proposed to exploit the redundancy in the system state. Numerical simulations have demonstrated the validity of the proposed schemes, using a linear model of electric generator dynamic system. Secondly, we propose a quickest detection based scheme to detect error propagation, which may happen in the proposed decoding scheme when channel condition is bad. Then we combine this proposed error propagation detection scheme with the proposed BP based channel decoding and state estimation algorithm. The validity of the proposed schemes has been shown by numerical simulations. Finally, we propose to use MSE-based transfer chart to evaluate the performance of the proposed BP based channel decoding and state estimation scheme. We focus on two models to evaluate the performance of BP based sequential and iterative channel decoding and state estimation. The numerical results show that MSE-based transfer chart can provide much insight about the performance of the proposed channel decoding and state estimation scheme

Polar Coding Schemes for Cooperative Transmission Systems

: In this thesis, a serially-concatenated coding scheme with a polar code as the outer code and a low density generator matrix (LDGM) code as the inner code is firstly proposed. It is shown that that the proposed scheme provides a method to improve significantly the low convergence of polar codes and the high error floor of LDGM codes while keeping the advantages of both such as the low encoding and decoding complexity. The bit error rate results show that the proposed scheme by reasonable design have the potential to approach a performance close to the capacity limit and avoid error floor effectively. Secondly, a novel transmission protocol based on polar coding is proposed for the degraded half-duplex relay channel. In the proposed protocol, the relay only needs to forward a part of the decoded source message that the destination needs according to the exquisite nested structure of polar codes. It is proved that the scheme can achieve the capacity of the half-duplex relay channel while enjoying low encoding/decoding complexity. By modeling the practical system, we verify that the proposed scheme outperforms the conventional scheme designed by low-density parity-check codes by simulations. Finally, a generalized partial information relaying protocol is proposed for degraded multiple-relay networks with orthogonal receiver components (MRN-ORCs). In such a protocol, each relay node decodes the received source message with the help of partial information from previous nodes and re-encodes part of the decoded message for transmission to satisfy the decoding requirements for the following relay node or the destination node. For the design of polar codes, the nested structures are constructed based on this protocol and the information sets corresponding to the partial messages forwarded are also calculated. It is proved that the proposed scheme achieves the theoretical capacity of the degraded MRN-ORCs while still retains the low-complexity feature of polar codes

802.11 Payload Iterative decoding between multiple transmission attempts

Abstract. The institute of electrical and electronics engineers (IEEE) 802.11 standard specifies widely used technology for wireless local area networks (WLAN). Standard specifies high-performance physical and media access control (MAC) layers for a distributed network but lacks an effective hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ). Currently, the standard specifies forward error correction (FEC), error detection (ED), and automatic repeat request (ARQ), but in case of decoding errors, the previously transmitted information is not used when decoding the retransmitted packet. This is called Type 1 HARQ. Type 1 HARQ uses received energy inefficiently, but the simple implementation makes it an attractive solution. Unfortunately, research applying more sophisticated HARQ schemes on top of IEEE 802.11 is limited. In this Master’s Thesis, a novel HARQ technology based on packet retransmissions that can be decoded in a turbo-like manner, keeping as much as possible compatibility with vanilla 802.11, is proposed. The proposed technology is simulated with both the IEEE 802.11 code and with the robust, efficient and smart communication in unpredictable environments (RESCUE) code. An additional interleaver is added before the convolutional encoder in the proposed technology, interleaving either the whole frame or only the payload to enable effective iterative decoding. For received frames, turbo-like iterations are done between initially transmitted packet copy and retransmissions. Results are compared against the non-iterative combining method maximizing signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), maximum ratio combining (MRC). The main design goal for this technology is to maintain compatibility with the 802.11 standard while allowing efficient HARQ. Other design goals are range extension, higher throughput, and better performance in terms of bit error rate (BER) and frame error rate (FER). This technology can be used for range extension at low SNR range and may provide up to 4 dB gain at medium SNR range compared to MRC. At high SNR, technology can reduce the penalty from retransmission allowing higher average modulation and coding scheme (MCS). However, these gains come with the cost of computational complexity from the iterative decoding. The main limiting factors of the proposed technology are decoding errors in the header and the scrambler area, and resource-hungry-processing. In simulations, perfect synchronization and packet detection is assumed, but in reality, especially at low SNR, packet detection and synchronization would be challenging. 802.11 pakettien iteratiivinen dekoodaus lähetysten välillä. Tiivistelmä. IEEE 802.11-standardi määrittelee yleisesti käytetyn teknologian langattomille lähiverkoille. Standardissa määritellään tehokas fyysinen- ja verkkoliityntäkerros hajautetuille verkoille, mutta siitä puuttuu tehokas yhdistetty automaattinen uudelleenlähetys. Nykyisellään standardi määrittelee virheenkorjaavan koodin, virheellisen paketin tunnistuksen sekä automaattisen uudelleenlähetyksen, mutta aikaisemmin lähetetyn paketin informaatiota ei käytetä hyväksi uudelleenlähetystilanteessa. Tämä menetelmä tunnetaan tyypin yksi yhdistettynä automaattisena uudelleenlähetyksenä. Tyypin yksi yhdistetty automaattinen uudelleenlähetys käyttää vastaanotettua signaalia tehottomasti, mutta yksinkertaisuus tekee siitä houkuttelevan vaihtoehdon. Valitettavasti edistyneempien uudelleenlähetysvaihtoehtojen tutkimusta 802.11-standardiin on rajoitetusti. Tässä diplomityössä esitellään uusi yhdistetty uudelleenlähetysteknologia, joka pohjautuu pakettien uudelleenlähetykseen, sallien turbo-tyylisen dekoodaamisen säilyttäen mahdollisimman hyvän taaksepäin yhteensopivuutta alkuperäisen 802.11-standardin kanssa. Tämä teknologia on simuloitu käyttäen sekä 802.11- että nk. RESCUE-virheenkorjauskoodia. Teknologiassa uusi lomittaja on lisätty konvoluutio-enkoodaajan eteen, sallien tehokkaan iteratiivisen dekoodaamisen, lomittaen joko koko paketin tai ainoastaan hyötykuorman. Vastaanotetuille paketeille tehdään turbo-tyyppinen iteraatio alkuperäisen vastaanotetun kopion ja uudelleenlähetyksien välillä. Tuloksia vertaillaan eiiteratiiviseen yhdistämismenetelmään, maksimisuhdeyhdistelyyn, joka maksimoi yhdistetyn signaali-kohinasuhteen. Tärkeimpänä suunnittelutavoitteena tässä työssä on tehokas uudelleenlähetysmenetelmä, joka ylläpitää taaksepäin yhteensopivuutta IEEE 802.11-standardin kanssa. Muita tavoitteita ovat kantaman lisäys, nopeampi yhteys ja matalampi bitti- ja pakettivirhesuhde. Kehitettyä teknologiaa voidaan käyttää kantaman lisäykseen matalan signaalikohinasuhteen vallitessa ja se on jopa 4 dB parempi kohtuullisella signaalikohinasuhteella kuin maksimisuhdeyhdistely. Korkealla signaali-kohinasuhteella teknologiaa voidaan käyttää pienentämään häviötä epäonnistuneesta paketinlähetyksestä ja täten sallien korkeamman modulaatio-koodiasteen käyttämisen. Valitettavasti nämä parannukset tulevat kasvaneen laskennallisen monimutkaisuuden kustannuksella, johtuen iteratiivisesta dekoodaamisesta. Isoimmat rajoittavat tekijät teknologian käytössä ovat dekoodausvirheet otsikossa ja datamuokkaimen siemenessä. Tämän lisäksi käyttöä rajoittaa resurssisyöppö prosessointi. Simulaatioissa oletetaan täydellinen synkronisointi, mutta todellisuudessa, erityisesti matalalla signaali-kohinasuhteella, paketin tunnistus ja synkronointi voivat olla haasteellisia

On the Design of a Novel Joint Network-Channel Coding Scheme for the Multiple Access Relay Channel

This paper proposes a novel joint non-binary network-channel code for the Time-Division Decode-and-Forward Multiple Access Relay Channel (TD-DF-MARC), where the relay linearly combines -- over a non-binary finite field -- the coded sequences from the source nodes. A method based on an EXIT chart analysis is derived for selecting the best coefficients of the linear combination. Moreover, it is shown that for different setups of the system, different coefficients should be chosen in order to improve the performance. This conclusion contrasts with previous works where a random selection was considered. Monte Carlo simulations show that the proposed scheme outperforms, in terms of its gap to the outage probabilities, the previously published joint network-channel coding approaches. Besides, this gain is achieved by using very short-length codewords, which makes the scheme particularly attractive for low-latency applications.Comment: 28 pages, 9 figures; Submitted to IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications - Special Issue on Theories and Methods for Advanced Wireless Relays, 201

Turbo Decoding and Detection for Wireless Applications

A historical perspective of turbo coding and turbo transceivers inspired by the generic turbo principles is provided, as it evolved from Shannon’s visionary predictions. More specifically, we commence by discussing the turbo principles, which have been shown to be capable of performing close to Shannon’s capacity limit. We continue by reviewing the classic maximum a posteriori probability decoder. These discussions are followed by studying the effect of a range of system parameters in a systematic fashion, in order to gauge their performance ramifications. In the second part of this treatise, we focus our attention on the family of iterative receivers designed for wireless communication systems, which were partly inspired by the invention of turbo codes. More specifically, the family of iteratively detected joint coding and modulation schemes, turbo equalization, concatenated spacetime and channel coding arrangements, as well as multi-user detection and three-stage multimedia systems are highlighted

Near-capacity joint source and channel coding of symbol values from an infinite source set using Elias Gamma Error correction codes

In this paper we propose a novel low-complexity Joint Source and Channel Code (JSCC), which we refer to as the Elias Gamma Error Correction (EGEC) code. Like the recently-proposed Unary Error Correction (UEC) code, this facilitates the practical near-capacity transmission of symbol values that are randomly selected from a set having an infinite cardinality, such as the set of all positive integers. However, in contrast to the UEC code, our EGEC code is a universal code, facilitating the transmission of symbol values that are randomly selected using any monotonic probability distribution. When the source symbols obey a particular zeta probability distribution, our EGEC scheme is shown to offer a 3.4 dB gain over a UEC benchmarker, when Quaternary Phase Shift Keying (QPSK) modulation is employed for transmission over an uncorrelated narrowband Rayleigh fading channel. In the case of another zeta probability distribution, our EGEC scheme offers a 1.9 dB gain over a Separate Source and Channel Coding (SSCC) benchmarker