Bounds on the achievable region for certain multiple description coding problems

An achievable region for the L-channel multiple description coding problem is presented. This region generalizes previous two-channel results of El Gamal and Cover (1982) and of Zhang and Berger (1987). New outer bounds on the rate distortion region for memoryless Gaussian sources with mean-squared error distortion are also derived. For the Gaussian source, the achievable region meets the outer bound at certain points.