Joint Source–Channel Turbo Techniques for Discrete-Valued Sources: From Theory to Practice

The principles which have been prevailing so far for designing communication systems rely on Shannon's source and channel coding separation theorem. This theorem states that source and channel optimum performance bounds can be approached as close as desired by designing independently the source and channel coding strategies. However, this theorem holds only under asymptotic conditions, where both codes are allowed infinite length and complexity. If the design of the system is constrained in terms of delay and complexity, if the sources are not stationary, or if the channels are nonergodic, separate design and optimization of the source and channel coders can be largely suboptimal. For practical systems, joint source–channel (de)coding may reduce the end-to-end distortion. It is one of the aspects covered by the term cross-layer design, meaning a rethinking of the layer separation principle. This article focuses on recent developments of joint source–channel turbo coding and decoding techniques, which are described in the framework of normal factor graphs. The scope is restricted to lossless compression and discrete-valued sources. The presented techniques can be applied to the quantized values of a lossy source codec but the quantizer itself and its impact are not considered.