The FlexCode Channel Coding Approach

The FlexCode project is a joint research project of KTH Stockholm, RWTH Aachen University, Ericsson AB, Nokia Siemens Networks, and Orange/France Telecom under the umbrella of the sixth framework programme of the European Commission (http://www.flexcode.eu). In this paper we present the channel coding approach used in the FlexCode project. Furthermore, a brief introduction to the channel model utilized in FlexCode is given. The presented channel encoder enables iterative source-channel decoding at the receiver in order to achieve near-capacity transmission of the source coder parameters. The structure of the encoder enables to flexibly select the coding rate as well as the size of the input block. This joint source-channel coding approach is able to handle both considered types of quantization in the FlexCode project: constrained entropy and constrained resolution. On the other hand, the channel coding approach presented in this paper is able to achieve near Shannon-limit performance for arbitrary bit streams which is shown by a simulation example.