Source coding using a class of universal hash functions

We consider a source coding scheme in which we use a mapping f /spl isin/ /spl Fscr/ as an encoder, where /spl Fscr/ is a class of universal hash functions. It is shown that, if /spl Fscr/ satisfies a certain condition, for any discrete source there exist an encoder using an f /spl isin/ /spl Fscr/ and a decoder such that the decoding error probability becomes negligible for sufficiently large blocklength. We also give the error exponent of the minimum-entropy decoder for i.i.d. sources that is not less than the error exponent of linear encoders.