5,401 research outputs found
Distributed Structure: Joint Expurgation for the Multiple-Access Channel
In this work we show how an improved lower bound to the error exponent of the
memoryless multiple-access (MAC) channel is attained via the use of linear
codes, thus demonstrating that structure can be beneficial even in cases where
there is no capacity gain. We show that if the MAC channel is modulo-additive,
then any error probability, and hence any error exponent, achievable by a
linear code for the corresponding single-user channel, is also achievable for
the MAC channel. Specifically, for an alphabet of prime cardinality, where
linear codes achieve the best known exponents in the single-user setting and
the optimal exponent above the critical rate, this performance carries over to
the MAC setting. At least at low rates, where expurgation is needed, our
approach strictly improves performance over previous results, where expurgation
was used at most for one of the users. Even when the MAC channel is not
additive, it may be transformed into such a channel. While the transformation
is lossy, we show that the distributed structure gain in some "nearly additive"
cases outweighs the loss, and thus the error exponent can improve upon the best
known error exponent for these cases as well. Finally we apply a similar
approach to the Gaussian MAC channel. We obtain an improvement over the best
known achievable exponent, given by Gallager, for certain rate pairs, using
lattice codes which satisfy a nesting condition.Comment: Submitted to the IEEE Trans. Info. Theor
Control-theoretic Approach to Communication with Feedback: Fundamental Limits and Code Design
Feedback communication is studied from a control-theoretic perspective,
mapping the communication problem to a control problem in which the control
signal is received through the same noisy channel as in the communication
problem, and the (nonlinear and time-varying) dynamics of the system determine
a subclass of encoders available at the transmitter. The MMSE capacity is
defined to be the supremum exponential decay rate of the mean square decoding
error. This is upper bounded by the information-theoretic feedback capacity,
which is the supremum of the achievable rates. A sufficient condition is
provided under which the upper bound holds with equality. For the special class
of stationary Gaussian channels, a simple application of Bode's integral
formula shows that the feedback capacity, recently characterized by Kim, is
equal to the maximum instability that can be tolerated by the controller under
a given power constraint. Finally, the control mapping is generalized to the
N-sender AWGN multiple access channel. It is shown that Kramer's code for this
channel, which is known to be sum rate optimal in the class of generalized
linear feedback codes, can be obtained by solving a linear quadratic Gaussian
control problem.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Automatic Contro
Source-Channel Diversity for Parallel Channels
We consider transmitting a source across a pair of independent, non-ergodic
channels with random states (e.g., slow fading channels) so as to minimize the
average distortion. The general problem is unsolved. Hence, we focus on
comparing two commonly used source and channel encoding systems which
correspond to exploiting diversity either at the physical layer through
parallel channel coding or at the application layer through multiple
description source coding.
For on-off channel models, source coding diversity offers better performance.
For channels with a continuous range of reception quality, we show the reverse
is true. Specifically, we introduce a new figure of merit called the distortion
exponent which measures how fast the average distortion decays with SNR. For
continuous-state models such as additive white Gaussian noise channels with
multiplicative Rayleigh fading, optimal channel coding diversity at the
physical layer is more efficient than source coding diversity at the
application layer in that the former achieves a better distortion exponent.
Finally, we consider a third decoding architecture: multiple description
encoding with a joint source-channel decoding. We show that this architecture
achieves the same distortion exponent as systems with optimal channel coding
diversity for continuous-state channels, and maintains the the advantages of
multiple description systems for on-off channels. Thus, the multiple
description system with joint decoding achieves the best performance, from
among the three architectures considered, on both continuous-state and on-off
channels.Comment: 48 pages, 14 figure
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