A Practical Approach to Joint Network-Source Coding

TL;DR

This paper presents a practical method for joint network-source coding that combines multiple description codes with optimized routing to efficiently transmit real-valued sources over capacity-constrained networks.

Contribution

It introduces a systematic optimization framework for designing multiple description codes and routing strategies tailored for joint network-source coding problems.

Findings

Multiple description coding with diversity routing improves transmission fidelity.

The proposed optimization approach effectively balances network capacity and source fidelity.

The method offers a practical solution for real-valued source communication over constrained networks.

Abstract

We are interested in how to best communicate a real valued source to a number of destinations (sinks) over a network with capacity constraints in a collective fidelity metric over all the sinks, a problem which we call joint network-source coding. It is demonstrated that multiple description codes along with proper diversity routing provide a powerful solution to joint network-source coding. A systematic optimization approach is proposed. It consists of optimizing the network routing given a multiple description code and designing optimal multiple description code for the corresponding optimized routes.