Polar codes for distributed source coding

Abstract

Polar codes were invented by Arıkan as the first “capacity achieving” codes for binary-input discrete memoryless symmetric channels with low encoding and decoding complexity. The “polarization phenomenon”, which is the underlying principle of polar codes, can be applied to different source and channel coding problems both in single-user and multi-user settings. In this work, polar coding methods for multi-user distributed source coding problems are investigated. First, a restricted version of lossless distributed source coding problem, which is also referred to as the Slepian-Wolf problem, is considered. The restriction is on the distribution of correlated sources. It is shown that if the sources are “binary symmetric” then single-user polar codes can be used to achieve full capacity region without time sharing. Then, a method for two-user polar coding is considered which is used to solve the Slepian-Wolf problem with arbitrary source distributions. This method is also extended to cover multiple-access channel problem which is the dual of Slepian-Wolf problem. Next, two lossy source coding problems in distributed settings are investigated. The first problem is the distributed lossy source coding which is the lossy version of the Slepian-Wolf problem. Although the capacity region of this problem is not known in general, there is a good inner bound called the Berger-Tung inner bound. A polar coding method that can achieve the whole dominant face of the Berger-Tung region is devised. The second problem considered is the multiple description coding problem. The capacity region for this problem is also not known in general. El Gamal-Cover inner bound is the best known bound for this problem. A polar coding method that can achieve any point on the dominant face of El Gamal-Cover region is devised.