Joint Source/Channel Coding and MAP Decoding of Arithmetic Codes

Joint Source/Channel Coding and MAP Decoding of Arithmetic Codes In this paper, a novel MAP estimation approach is employed for error correction of arithmetic codes with a forbidden symbol. The system is founded on the principle of joint source channel coding, which allows one to unify the arithmetic decoding and error correction takes into a single process, with superior performance compared to traditional separated techniques. The proposed system improves the performance in terms of error correction with respect to a separated source and channel coding approach based on convolutional codes, with the additional great advantage of allowing complete flexibility in adjusting the coding rate. The proposed MAP decoder is tested in the case of image transmission across the AWGN channel and compared against standard FEC techniques in terms of performance an complexity. Both hard and soft decodng are taken into account, and excellent result in terms of packet error rate and decoded image quality are obtained.