Near-Shannon/Slepian–Wolf Performance for Unknown Correlated Sources Over AWGN Channels

Abstract

We consider the problem of joint source-channel coding of two correlated binary information sequences. Instead of compressing the information using source coding, both sequences are independently channel encoded and transmitted over two independent additive white Gaussian noise channels. No information about the correlation between the sources is required in the encoding process. The correlation between both sequences is exploited at the receiver, allowing reliable communications at signal-to-noise ratios very close to the theoretical limits established by the combination of Shannon and Slepian-Wolf theorems. This occurs even when the correlation between sources is not known at the decoder, since it can be estimated jointly with the iterative decoding process.