The Multiple Access Channel with Feedback and Correlated Sources

TL;DR

This paper explores communication strategies for a multiple access channel with feedback and correlated sources, focusing on achievable rate regions and the impact of different coding strategies in wireless sensor networks.

Contribution

It derives achievable rate regions for the MACFCS and compares combined and separated source-channel coding strategies.

Findings

Different strategies perform better depending on source correlation.

Numerical results on Gaussian channels illustrate the effectiveness of each approach.

The study provides insights into optimal coding strategies for correlated sources in wireless networks.

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate communication strategies for the multiple access channel with feedback and correlated sources (MACFCS). The MACFCS models a wireless sensor network scenario in which sensors distributed throughout an arbitrary random field collect correlated measurements and transmit them to a common sink. We derive achievable rate regions for the three-node MACFCS. First, we study the strategy when source coding and channel coding are combined, which we term full decoding at sources. Second, we look at several strategies when source coding and channel coding are separated, which we term full decoding at destination. From numerical computations on Gaussian channels, we see that different strategies perform better under certain source correlations and channel setups.