Polar codes are optimal for lossy source coding

We consider lossy source compression of a binary symmetric source using polar codes and the low-complexity successive encoding algorithm. It was recently shown by Arikan that polar codes achieve the capacity of arbitrary symmetric binary-input discrete memoryless channels under a successive decoding strategy. We show the equivalent result for lossy source compression, i.e., we show that this combination achieves the rate-distortion bound for a binary symmetric source. We further show the optimality of polar codes for various problems including the binary Wyner-Ziv and the binary Gelfand-Pinsker problem.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: TIT
• Authors: Satish Babu Korada, Rüdiger L. Urbanke
• Keywords: Binary Symmetric Source, Education, Lossy Source Compression, Polar Codes, TIT 2010