Joint Source-Channel Coding for the Transmission of Correlated Sources over Two-Way Channels

TL;DR

This paper introduces a hybrid digital/analog joint source-channel coding scheme for transmitting correlated sources over two-way channels, leveraging source correlation for improved coordination and performance.

Contribution

It proposes a novel JSCC scheme that unifies and extends previous methods, providing a complete theoretical framework and bounds for correlated sources over two-way channels.

Findings

The scheme effectively utilizes source correlation for better transmission.

A distortion outer bound is derived for the system.

A complete JSCC theorem is established for certain channel classes.

Abstract

A joint source-channel coding (JSCC) scheme based on hybrid digital/analog coding is proposed for the transmission of correlated sources over discrete-memoryless two-way channels (DM-TWCs). The scheme utilizes the correlation between the sources in generating channel inputs, thus enabling the users to coordinate their transmission to combat channel noise. The hybrid scheme also subsumes prior coding methods such as rate-one separate source-channel coding and uncoded schemes for two-way lossy transmission, as well as the correlation-preserving coding scheme for (almost) lossless transmission. Moreover, we derive a distortion outer bound for the source-channel system using a genie-aided argument. A complete JSSC theorem for a class of correlated sources and DM-TWCs whose capacity region cannot be enlarged via interactive adaptive coding is also established. Examples that illustrate the theorem are given.