Performance Bounds and Distance Spectra of Variable Length Codes in Turbo/Concatenated Systems

Abstract--Variable length codes (VLCs), used in data compression, are very sensitive to error propagation in the presence of noisy channels. Addressing this problem with joint sourcechannel turbo techniques has been proposed in the literature and looks quite promising. But to date, most code-related conclusions are based on simulations. This paper states and proves several theoretical results about the robustness of prefix VLCs concatenated with linear error correcting codes (ECC), assuming a maximum likelihood decoder. Especially, an approximate and asymptotically tight distance spectrum of the concatenated code (VLC+ECC) is rigorously developed. Together with the union bound, it provides upper bounds on the symbol and frame/packet error rates.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: TCOM
• Authors: Xavier Jaspar, Luc Vandendorpe
• Keywords: Joint Sourcechannel Turbo, Maximum Likelihood Decoder, Software Engineering, TCOM 2010, Tight Distance Spectrum