On Iterative Decoding Schemes For Communication Over Wireless Channels

On Iterative Decoding Schemes
for Communication over Wireless

Channels
by
Saikat Majumder
Department of
Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering
Submitted in fulfillment
of the requirements of the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
to the
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY RAIPUR

November, 2016
Declaration
I hereby declare that the work presented in the thesis titled On Iterative De-
coding Schemes for Communication over Wireless Channels is a bonafide
record of the systematic research work done by me under the supervision of Dr.
Shrish Verma, Professor, Department of Electronics and Telecommunication Engi-
neering, National Institute of Technology Raipur, India. No part of this thesis has
been submitted elsewhere for any other degree or qualification and it is all my own
work unless referenced to the contrary in the text.
Place: NIT, Raipur (Saikat Majumder)

Date: November, 2016
ii
Department of Electronics and Telecommunication
G. E. Road, Raipur-492010, Chhattisgarh.
Certificate by the Supervisor
This is to certify that the work entitled On Iterative Decoding Schemes for
Communication over Wireless Channels is a piece of research work done by
Mr. Saikat Majumder under my guidance and supervision for the award of degree
of Doctor of Philosophy in Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering
of National Institute of Technology Raipur, Chhattisgarh, India.
To the best of my knowledge and belief, this thesis
1. Embodies the work of candidate himself.
2. Has duly been completed.
3. Fulfills the requirement of the ordinance related to the Ph.D. degree of the
institute.
4. Is up to the standard both in respect of content and language for being referred
to the examiner.
Signature of the Supervisor
(Shrish Verma, Ph.D.)

Professor,
Dept. of Electronics and Telecomm.
NIT Raipur.
Forwarded
Chairman, DRC
Dedicated to
The Almighty.
Acknowledgements
Throughout my Ph.D. work I came across many people whose support helped me to
complete this research work and at this moment I would like to take the opportunity
to acknowledge them. First and foremost I would like to express my deep and sincere
gratitude towards my respectable supervisor, Prof. Shrish Verma for his invaluable
guidance, constant inspiration and motivation along with enormous moral support
during my difficult phase. I am indebted to him for the valuable time he has spared
for me during this work. I express my sincere gratitude to Prof. Sudarshan Tiwari,
Director, NIT Raipur and Chairman, Doctoral Research Committee (DRC) of Elec-
tronics and Telecommunication department for encouragement and kind support.
I am grateful to my Doctoral Guidance Committee (DGC) members, Prof. A. S.
Thoke and Dr. A. Khare for their guidance and help.
I am very much thankful to the my colleges in the department, Dr. B. Acharya,
Dr. A. S. Raghuvanshi, Dr. T. Meenpal, Sri. R. Chaurasiya, Sri. A. Gupta, Dr. A.
Naugrahiya and Sri. S. Chakraborty for their continuous help and encouragement.
I am specially thankful to Dr. A. S. Raghuvanshi and Sri. Subhnakar Majumdar
for their suggestions regarding writing of the thesis. I acknowledge the help of
my colleagues in the Department of Information Technology and Department of
Computer Science & engineering in this regard. I specially acknowledge the help of
Sri. Rakesh Tripathi for numerous help during the course of Ph.D.
I acknowledge all technical and other support staffs for their cooperation. Finally,
I thank my family and parents for their support.
Place: NIT, Raipur (Saikat Majumder)

Date: November, 2016
v
On Iterative Decoding Schemes for
Communication over Wireless Channels
Saikat Majumder
Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

November 2016
Abstract
Concatenated coding schemes consist of the combination of two or more simple

constituent encoders and interleavers. Iterative decoding of such concatenated codes
has been shown to yield remarkable coding gains close to the theoretical limits, with
reasonable decoding complexity. Core of iterative decoding structure are soft-input
soft-out (SISO) a posteriori probability (APP) modules for the constituent decoders,
which exchange extrinsic information iteratively. Iterative decoding techniques have
also been developed which exchange hard decisions and are less complex compared
to SISO iterative decoders. Many coding schemes proposed in literature could be
considered instances of concatenated codes. Such a concatenated structure can be
found in forward error correction (FEC) based multiple description coding (MDC),
source-channel coding and network-channel coding.
In this work, we propose an iterative SISO decoding algorithm for FEC based
MDC for transmission of progressively coded image over wireless channels. In the
proposed scheme, inner channel decoder (convolutional code) accepts soft channel
reliability information and iteratively exchange soft extrinsic information with outer
FEC decoder (RS decoder). Next an iterative decoder is proposed for FEC based
MDC which uses low-density parity-check (LDPC) and convolutional code, where
both the component decoders exchange hard decisions. Such a scheme has lower
computational complexity and is relevant to research in error correction for cloud
transmission applications. In sequel, we propose a scheme which include MIMO
antenna system to achieve diversity gain in fading channel for transmission of FEC
vii
based MDC. Our innovation lie in incorporating iterative decoding between FEC
based multiple description decoder and MIMO demodulator. Next, iterative source-
channel decoding is applied in the context of two-channel quantizer based MDC.
In the proposed MDC schemes, it is demonstrated that performance of two-channel
MDC scheme can be improved by utilizing soft information in the form of received
signal log likelihood ratio (LLR) and noise resilient decoding of arithmetic codes
without the need of extra redundancy. Finally, iterative SISO decoding technique
is applied to network coding in multiple access relay channel (MARC). Proposed
algorithm enables network code and channel decoders to exchange soft information
iteratively and to achieve an improved performance compared to a hard decision
iterative decoder. This scheme is also extended to the scenario where in a MARC
setup, two user nodes cooperate with each other using distributed space-time code,
in addition to network coding.
Overall, in this work it is shown that as many conventional coding schemes can be
considered instances of product code and hence iterative decoding can be applied. In
the schemes proposed in the present work, it is shown that, in general, application of
soft and hard decision iterative decoding results in improved performance compared
to other existing schemes in literature.
******
Department of Electronics and Telecommunication
G. E. Road, Raipur-492010, Chhattisgarh.
Certificate by the Examiners
This is to certify that the work entitled On Iterative Decoding Schemes for
Communication over Wireless Channels submitted by Saikat Majumder is
hereby recommended for award of degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Electron-
ics and Telecommunication Engineering of National Institute of Technology
Raipur, Chhattisgarh, India.
Internal Examiner External Examiner

Contents
Declaration ii
Certificate by the Supervisor iii
Acknowledgements v
Abstract vi
Certificate by the Examiners viii
List of Figures xiv
List of Tables xx
List of Abbreviations and Symbols xx
1 Introduction 1
1.1 The Turbo Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.1 Genesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.2 Turbo Code and Iterative Decoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.2 Turbo-like Coding Schemes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.2.1 Concatenated Coding and Decoding Schemes . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.2.2 Joint Source-Channel Coding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.2.3 Joint Network-Channel Coding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.3 Coding for Wireless Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.3.1 Channel Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.3.2 Cooperative Diversity in Wireless Networks . . . . . . . . . . 12
ix
x
1.4 Thesis Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2 Background Overview and Related Work 16

2.1 Iterative Decoding and Turbo-like Codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.2 Multiple Description Coding Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.2.1 Multiple Description Quantizers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.2.2 FEC Based Multiple Description Coding . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.2.3 Multiple Description Transform Coding . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.3 Iterative Source-Channel Decoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.4 Cooperative Diversity in Relay Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.4.1 Three Terminal Relay Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.4.2 Diversity through Network Coding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2.5 Motivation and Problem Formulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2.5.1 Problem Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.5.2 Objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.6 Summary of Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
2.6.1 Iterative decoding of FEC Based Multiple Descriptions with
Soft RS Decoder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
2.6.2 Iterative Decoding of FEC Based Multiple Descriptions with
Hard RS Decoder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
2.6.3 Iterative Soft Decision Source-Channel Decoding of Multiple
Description Coded Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
2.6.4 Iterative Decoding of Network-Channel Codes . . . . . . . . . 42
2.7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3 Iterative Decoding of FEC Based Multiple Descriptions with Soft

RS Decoder 44
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.2 FEC Based Multiple Description Coding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
3.3 Iterative Decoding of FEC Based MDC with Soft RS Decoder . . . . 48
3.3.1 System Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
3.3.2 Iterative Decoding of Multiple Descriptions . . . . . . . . . . . 49
xi
3.3.3 Complexity Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

3.4 Iterative Decoding of Multiple Descriptions over Opportunistic Relay
Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
3.5 Performance of Iterative Decoder for FEC Based MDC with Soft RS
Decoder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
3.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
4 Iterative Decoding of FEC Based Multiple Descriptions with Hard

RS Decoder 66
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
4.2 Iterative Decoding of LDPC-RS Coded FEC Based MDC . . . . . . . 69
4.2.1 Encoding in LDPC-RS Based MDC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
4.2.2 Iterative Decoding of LDPC-RS based MDC . . . . . . . . . . 71
4.2.3 Performance of Iterative Decoder for LDPC-RS based MDC . 77
4.3 Iterative Decoding of Differential Space-time Coded FEC based MDC 81
4.3.1 Preliminaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
4.3.2 System Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
4.3.3 Three Stage Iterative Decoder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
4.3.4 Performance of Iterative Decoder for Differential Space-time
Coded FEC based MDC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
4.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
5 Iterative Soft Decision Source-Channel Decoding of Multiple De-

scription Coded Image 96
5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
5.2 Iterative Source-Channel Decoding of AC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
5.2.1 Low Complexity SISO Decoding of AC . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
5.2.2 Accumulator Aided SISO Decoding of AC . . . . . . . . . . . 100
5.2.3 Performance of Accumulator Aided SISO Decoding of AC . . 101
5.3 Iterative Source-Channel Decoding of Two
Channel MDC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
xii
5.3.2 Performance of Iterative Source-Channel Decoding of Two

Channel MDC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Channel MDC with EREC-ST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
5.4.2 EREC-ST and Packet formation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
5.4.3 Performance of Iterative Source-Channel Decoding of Two
Channel MDC with EREC-ST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
5.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
6 Iterative Decoding of Network-Channel Codes 126

6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
6.2 Iterative Network-Channel Decoding in MARC . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
6.2.1 System Model and Coding Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
6.2.2 Iterative Network-Channel Decoder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
6.2.3 Complexity Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
6.2.4 EXIT Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
6.2.5 Performance of Iterative Network-Channel Decoder in MARC 141
6.3 Iterative Network-Channel Decoding with Cooperative Space-Time
Transmission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
6.3.1 System Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
6.3.2 Iterative Network-Channel Decoder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
6.3.3 EXIT Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
6.3.4 Performance of Iterative Network-Channel Decoder with Co-
operative Space-Time Transmission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
6.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
7 Conclusions and Future Work 158

7.1 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
7.1.1 Soft Iterative Decoding of FEC based MDC . . . . . . . . . . 158
7.1.2 Iterative Decoding of FEC Based MDC with Hard RS Decoder 160
7.1.3 Iterative Source-Channel Decoding of Two-Channel MDC . . 162
xiii
7.1.4 Iterative Decoding of Network-Channel Code . . . . . . . . . . 163

7.2 Future Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
References R-1
Authors Bio-data A-1
Publications and Outcomes A-3

List of Figures
1.1 Turbo encoder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

1.2 Turbo Decoder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3 Two stage serially concatenated code: the encoder and iterative de-
coder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.4 Three stage serially concatenated code: encoders and iterative de-
coders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.5 Uplink for two mobile users (MU1 and MU2) with the help of relay
on the MARC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.6 A simple relaying scheme. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.7 Two common types of multiple-description coding, (a) Quantizer
based MDC, and (b) FEC based MDC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.8 Logical progression of chapters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.1 Priority encoding for FEC based multiple description coding. P and
I indicates parity and information symbols of FEC code, respectively. 22
2.2 Block diagram of a generic baseband transceiver system with ISCD. . 26
2.3 Relay communication with three terminals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.4 The butterfly network: Example of network coding in wireline net-
work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.5 The uplink for two mobile stations (S1 and S2 ) with cooperative di-
versity. (a) Diversity obtained by simple relaying, (b) Network coded
diversity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
xiv
xv
3.1 Two dimensional (2-D) arrangement of RS and RSCC codewords in

FEC based MDC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
3.2 System model showing encoding, transmission and decoding of FEC
based MDC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
3.3 Block diagram of iterative soft decoder of FEC based multiple de-
scription code. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
3.4 Two phases of opportunistic cooperative communication using relays. 56
3.5 Average PSNR versus channel SNR for the case of transmission of
Lena image coded at rate 0.2 over AWGN channel. Improvement of
PSNR at different iterations of the proposed scheme is shown. . . . . 60
3.6 Average PSNR versus channel SNR at different iterations for the case
of transmission of Lena image coded at rate 0.2 over Rayleigh flat
fading channel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
3.7 Average PSNR versus channel SNR for the case of transmission of
Lena image coded at rate 0.2 over AWGN channel. Performance of
the proposed scheme is compared to two other schemes. . . . . . . . . 61
3.8 Comparison of PSNR performance of the proposed decoder with ref-
erence decoders for the case of transmission of FEC based MDC over
Rayleigh fast fading channel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
3.9 Comparison of PSNR performance of the proposed decoder with ref-
erence decoders over quasi-static fading channel. . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
3.10 PSNR performance of the proposed iterative decoder compared to
baseline decoder for the case of transmission over COAF relay scheme.
Simulation is performed for the case of R number of relays partici-
pating in the transmission. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
3.11 PSNR performance of the proposed iterative decoder compared to
baseline decoder for the case of transmission over CODF relay scheme. 65
4.1 n-channel FEC based multiple description coding technique for a pro-
gressive bitstream. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
4.2 Encoding and iterative decoding of LDPC-RS coded FEC based mul-
tiple description scheme. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
xvi
4.3 Comparison of PSNR performance as function of channel SNR for

128 128 Lena image transmitted over AWGN channel. . . . . . . . 79
4.4 Performance comparison of the proposed scheme with two reference
schemes for Lena 128 128 image transmitted over Rayleigh fading
channel with fD Ts = 0.01. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
4.5 Performance comparison of the proposed scheme with two reference
schemes for Lena 128 128 image transmitted over Rayleigh fading
channel with fD Ts = 0.05. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
4.6 Performance comparison of the proposed scheme with LDPC-RS tan-
dem scheme for Lena 128 128 image transmitted over two COST
207 frequency selective channels. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
4.7 Formation of multiple descriptions from a progressive bitstream using
Reed-Solomon code and convolutional code. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
4.8 Encoder block diagram consisting of cascade of FEC based multiple
description coder and DSTBC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
4.9 Iterative decoding of FEC based multiple descriptions, consists of
three concatenated stages. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
4.10 (a) Basic trellis structure of BPSK group DSTBC, (b) Section of
extended trellis of BPSK group DSTBC for P = 2 having 64 states. . 86
4.11 PSNR as function of channel SNR for different number of global it-
erations in Rayleigh fading channel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
4.12 PSNR as function of channel SNR for different values of inner and
outer loop iterations in Rayleigh fading channel. . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
4.13 PSNR performance of proposed scheme compared to baseline scheme
as function of channel SNR in Jakes channel with fD Ts = 0.01. . . . 93
4.14 PSNR performance of proposed and baseline scheme in Jakes channel
with fD Ts = 0.005. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
5.1 Multiple description index assignment: (a) 2 diagonal staggered quan-

tization cells; (b) 3 diagonal higher spread quantization cells. . . . . . 98
5.2 Soft-input soft-output decoding of AC based on Chase algorithm. . . 99
5.3 Joint source-channel arithmetic coding system using accumulator. . . 101
xvii
5.4 PER performance of the ACC-CC-AC system compared to baseline

CC-AC scheme. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
5.5 PSNR versus Eb /N0 plot for proposed scheme applied to SPIHT image
coding at RS = 0.4 bpp. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
5.6 PSNR versus Eb /N0 plot for proposed scheme applied to SPIHT image
coding at RS = 1 bpp. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
5.7 Proposed two channel MDC system with multiple wavelet tree coding. 105
5.8 Wavelet tree in a 3 level DWT and its corresponding image content. . 107
5.9 PSNR performance of the proposed scheme (D = 2) with SPIHT
coding of multiple wavelet trees. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
5.10 PSNR performance of the proposed scheme (D = 3) with SPIHT
coding of multiple wavelet trees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
5.11 Block diagram of proposed two-channel MDC scheme utilizing itera-
tive source-channel decoding and EREC-ST. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
5.12 Figure shows four variable length blocks VLB(0), VLB(1), VLB(2)
and VLB(3) being rearranged into fixed length slots FLS(0-3)with
EREC/EREC-ST algorithm. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
5.13 (a) Four sseg linked list generated by SVLB Reconstructor subroutine
in the process of EREC-ST decoding of FLS created in Figure 3. (b)
Four bseg linked list generated by function VLB Reconstructor, where
bseg i corresponds to VLB(i). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
5.14 Detailed exposition of iterative source-channel decoder block in the
Figure 5.11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
5.15 Performance comparison of proposed scheme for transmission over
AWGN channel (with no packet loss) for 2 diagonal index assignment
case (D = 2). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
5.16 Performance of proposed scheme for transmission over AWGN chan-
nel (with no packet loss) for D = 3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
5.17 Image recovered by proposed scheme (a) compared with recovery by
baseline system (b) at Eb /N0 of 3 dB and D = 3. PSNR of images
(a) and (b) are 33.6 dB and 27 dB, respectively. . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
xviii
5.18 Performance of proposed scheme (D = 2) for transmission over packet

loss channel at different values of Eb /N0 for wireless channel. . . . . . 124
5.19 Performance of proposed scheme (D = 3) for transmission over packet
loss channel at different values of Eb /N0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
6.1 The uplink for two mobile stations (S1 and S2 ) with cooperative di-
versity. (a) Diversity obtained by simple relaying, (b) Network coded
diversity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
6.2 Multiple access relay channel with two users transmitting channel
coded information to a base station. Network coding operation is
performed at the relay node. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
6.3 (a) Block diagram of encoder at mobile user nodes, (b) Network cod-
ing operation at relay node. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
6.4 Data packets from two sources are ordered in alternate rows. Total
number of rows from two sources is L1 +L2 . Remaining rows of parity
check bits are calculated and transmitted from the relay node. . . . . 133
6.5 Block diagram of the proposed decoder. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
6.6 EXIT chart of the proposed network-channel decoder with (15,11) RS
code as channel code (outer code) and punctured (5, 7)8 RSCC acting
as network code with code rate of 2/3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
6.7 EXIT chart with (31,27) RS code and punctured (15, 17)8 RSCC act-
ing as network code with code rate of 2/3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
6.8 EXIT chart with (15, 11) RS outer code and different RSCC codes
as network code. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
6.9 BER performance of the proposed scheme using (15, 11) RS code
and punctured (5, 7)8 RSCC with number of decoding iterations over
Rayleigh block fading channel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
6.10 BER performance for (31,27) RS code (15, 17)8 RSCC combination
with number of decoding iterations over Rayleigh block fading channel.143
6.11 Performance comparison of the proposed iterative decoder with dif-
ferent reference schemes. Different network codes at relay node are
evaluated for a fixed channel code at the user nodes. . . . . . . . . . 145
xix
6.12 Performance comparison with different channel codes at the user

nodes and fixed network coding at relay. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
6.13 Performance of proposed scheme in asymmetric scenario over Rayleigh
fading channel, with average relay-destination SNR of 8 dB. Average
SNR of User 1 to destination is 1 and user 2 to destination SNR is
2 = 10 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
6.14 Space-time and network coded cooperation. (a) In first phase, user
nodes broadcast information to relay, base station and other user
node. (b) Second phase consists of retransmission by user nodes and
relay node. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
6.15 (a) Block diagram of encoder at mobile user nodes, (b) Network cod-
ing operation at relay node. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
6.16 Block diagram of the proposed decoder. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
6.17 EXIT chart of the proposed iterative soft decoder utilizing (31,25)
RS code (outer decoder) as channel code. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
6.18 EXIT chart of the proposed iterative soft decoder utilizing (15,7) RS
code as channel code. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
6.19 BER performance of the proposed scheme using (31,25) RS code with
number of decoding iterations over Rayleigh block fading channel. . . 153
6.20 BER performance of the proposed scheme using (15,7) RS code with
number of decoding iterations over Rayleigh block fading channel. . . 153
6.21 Performance comparison of the proposed iterative decoder with a ref-
erence scheme employing XOR based network code. BER perfor-
mance are also compared for the case when SNR at relay is 10 dB
higher than direct links. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
6.22 Performance of the proposed iterative scheme using (31,25) RS code
for different RSCC used as network code. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
List of Tables
1.1 Different serial concatenated systems with iterative decoding . . . . 8
3.1 Performance advantage of proposed scheme in AWGN channel. . . . . 63

3.2 Performance advantage of proposed scheme in Rayleigh flat fading
channel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
4.1 Performance advantage of proposed scheme in Jakes fading channel

with fD Ts = 0.01 with CSI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
5.1 Description size after addition of CRC bytes and reduction due to AC.108
5.2 State and tail bits after different stages in the Figure 5.12. . . . . . . 115
6.1 Transmission schedule at the user and relay nodes. . . . . . . . . . . 131

6.2 Transmission schedule at the mobile user and relay nodes. . . . . . . 149
xx
List of Abbreviations and Symbols
List of Abbreviations
ABP Adaptive Belief Propagation
AC Arithmetic Code
ACC Accumulator
APP A posteriori probability
AWGN Additive White Gaussian Noise
BC Broadcast Channel
BCJR Bahl-Cocke-Jelinek-Raviv algorithm
BER Bit Error Rate
BM Berlekamp-Massey
BPSK Binary Phase Shift Keying
BS Base Station
BSC Binary Symmetric Channel
CC Convolutional Code
COAF Coded Oppertunistic Amplify and Forward
CODF Coded Oppertunistic Decode and Forward
xxi
xxii
CRC Cyclic Redundancy Check
dB Decibel
DSTBC Differential Space-Time Block Code
DWT Discrete wavelet transform
EREC Error Resilient Entropy Coding
EREC-ST EREC assisted by Start and Tail bits
EXIT Extrinsic information transfer
FEC Forward Error Correction
FLS Fixed Length Slot
GF Galois Field
ISCD Iterative Source-Channel Decoding
JPEG Joint Photographic Experts Group
JSCD Joint Source-Channel Decoding
LDPC Low-Density Parity Check
LLR Log likelihood ratio
MAC Multiple Access Channel
MAP Maximum a posteriori
MARC Multiple Access Relay Channel
MDC Multiple Description Coding
MDS Maximum Distance Seperable
MDSQ Multiple Description Scalar Quantizer
MDTC Multiple Description Transform Coding

xxiii
MIMO Multiple Input Multiple Output
ML Maximum Likelihood
NC Network Coding
OFDM Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing
PCC Parallel Concatenated Code
PER Packet Error Rate
PSD Power Spectrum Density
PSNR Peak Signal to Noise Ratio
RN Relay Node
RS Reed Solomon
RSCC Recursive Systematic Convolutional Code
RTP Real-time Transport Protocol
SCC Serial Concatenated Code
SISO Soft Input Soft Output
SNR Signal to Noise Ratio
SPIHT Set Partitioning in Hierarchial Trees
STBC Space-Time Block Code
TCP Transmission Control Protocol
UDP User Datagram Protocol
VLB Variable Length Block
VLC Variable Length Code
WAP Wireless Access Point

xxiv
List of Symbols
Fading coefficient
A primitive element in GF(q)
Scalar multiplication
Quantization step size
Transmission energy per symbol
Damping coefficient in sum-product algorithm
Belongs to
Log-likelihood ratio of a bit
d.e Ceiling function
b.c Flooring function
Fq Finite field with q elements
O Big O notation for computational complexity
Number of states of convolutional code
Bit-wise XOR operation
Interleaver function
Permutation function
1 De-interleaver function
Proportional to
2 Noise variance
Subset of
Average row weight of parity check matrix

xxv
D Distortion function
E Expectation function
Eb /N0 Energy per bit to noise power spectral density ratio
H Parity check matrix
k Number of information symbols in a RS codeword
La A priori log-likelihood ratio
Le Extrinsic log-likelihood ratio
Lp A posteriori log-likelihood ratio
Lch Log-likelihood ratio of 2-D array of bits at the channel output
m Number of bits in a RS symbol
n Number of symbols in a RS codeword
Niter Maximum number of decoding iterations
p Number of RS codewords in MDC frame

Chapter 1
Introduction
The current work investigates iterative decoding schemes in wireless point-to-point

links and multiterminal networks. The main objective of the proposed schemes
are transmission of multimedia information and data over time-varying and fading
wireless channels. As this work is based on iterative decoding and multiterminal
networks, these topics are now introduced in this chapter.
1.1 The Turbo Revolution
1.1.1 Genesis
Ever since Shannons revolutionary finding regarding source and channel coding in
1948 [1], the fundamental limits of reliable communication established by him have
been the model and the driving force for the researchers in the field of coding and
information theory. The challenge in communication is that of reproducing at one
point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point. Shannon
showed that it is possible to transmit digital data with arbitrary high reliability,
over noise-corrupted channels, by encoding the message with sufficient redundancy
and subsequently decoding at the receiver. This redundancy is typically provided
by a suitable channel code. A practical communication system designer faces two
critical questions - one is quantitative: how much redundancy is required?, and the
other one is qualitative: what is the kind of redundancy and how to achieve it? [2].
1
2
Shannon answered the first question and proved that there is a limit to the
information rate for reliable communication over noisy channel. Quantifying the
amount of redundancy required for reliable transmission allows the optimum use of
the communication resources, e.g., transmission power, channel bandwidth. Shan-
nons channel capacity theorem states that for a communication channel H, there
exists a reliable coding scheme if and only if information rate R < C(H). The
number C(H) [0, 1], called the channel capacity. However, Shannons results are
non-constructive and does not answer the second question.
The second question posed tries to investigate which coding scheme would bring
us close to the channel capacity R < C(H) in a practical and efficient way [3].
This proved to be challenging, if not impossible. There has been extraordinary
developments in design of practical codes over the decades by borrowing insights
mostly from the field of mathematics. The algebraic coding paradigm dominated
the pre 90s decades of channel coding. Algebraic coding theory is mainly concerned
with linear (n, k, d) block code over a q-ary field Fq . For the special case of q = 2 and
F2 , we have binary linear block code. A (n, k, d) block code consists of 2k n-tuple
binary codewords. The parameter d denotes the minimum distance between any
two distinct codewords, i.e. number of bits any two codewords differ. The principal
objective of algebraic coding theory is to maximize the minimum distance d for a
given code. Over a binary symmetric channel (BSC), the optimum decoding rule
chooses the valid codeword closest in Hamming distance to the received codeword.
Thus, a code with minimum distance of d can correct all patterns of (d1)/2 or fewer
channel errors. Even though binary algebraic block code can be applied on additive
white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel, they have not proved to approach Shannon
capacity of the channel or to the channel capacity of BSC. Thus, an efficient and
practical coding scheme which approaches the capacity limit still eluded the coding
theory community even after five decades of Shannons paper.
It was not until 1993, when at the IEEE International conference on Commu-
nication (ICC) in Geneva, Switzerland, Berrou, Glavieux, and Thitimajshima [4]
stunned the research community by introducing a new class of codes, called Turbo
codes, that could achieve near-Shannon-limit performance with reasonable decod-
3
ing complexity. The novelty of Turbo code lies in using pseudorandom interleavers
in the encoding algorithm and applying carefully designed iterative decoding al-
gorithm. The interleavers allow randomness envisaged in the proof of Shannons
channel coding theorem, yet preserving enough structure to allow efficient encoding
and decoding. In the words of Daniel J. Costello, Jr. and G. David Forney, Jr. [3],
Fifty years of effort and invention have finally produced coding schemes
that closely approach Shannons channel capacity limit on memoryless
communication channels.
Invention of Turbo codes initiated the revolution in the field of error correction
coding. Today Turbo code has become part of everyday technology - these are
employed in 3G and 4G mobile telephony, several satelleite communication standards
and in IEEE 802.16 metropolitan wireless network standards.
Shortly after Turbo codes provided the initial momentum to the paradigm shift
to the coding theory research, several researchers [5, 6], with background in physics
and computer science, rather than in coding, independently discovered codes similar
to low density parity check (LDPC) codes. It was Robert Gallager who originally
invented LDPC codes and its iterative a posteriori probability (APP) decoding al-
gorithm way back in 1963 [7]. His work was largely forgotten for more than 30
years. There was little interest in 1960s and 1970s because these codes were much
too complex for the technology of that time. Following words of Forney [8] rightly
describes the limitations of those times.
In 1962 there was a company called Codex Corporation. The company

was founded to exploit R. Gallagers patents on LDPC codes and J. L.
Messys threshold decoding algorithm. I joined the company in 1965 as
Director of Research, Advanced Product Planning. I can assure you that
the twenty years those patent lived, we never considered once Gallagers
LDPC codes because they were far too complicated for the technology
of 60s and 70s. We did not have room full of computers to decode them.
As the name suggests, LDPC codes are block codes with parity-check matrices
that are sparse, or containing only a very small number of non-zero entries. Other
4
than the requirement that parity-check matrix be sparse, an LDPC code itself is no
different form any other block code. The biggest difference between LDPC codes
and classical block codes is the way it is decoded. Classical block codes are decoded
with maximum liklihood (ML) like decoding algorithm. They are usually short and
design is based on algebraic principles. On the other hand LDPC codes are decoded
iteratively using graphical representation of their parity-check matrix and are much
longer, less structured, and designed with properties of parity-check matrix as focus.
Both turbo code and LDPC code utilize the class of algorithm known as message-
passing decoding algorithm and is the main reason behind their capacity achieving
performance [9]. Wiberg [10] showed that both these classes of codes could be
understood as instances of codes on sparse graphs, and their decoding algorithm
could be understood as instances of a general iterative APP decoding algorithm
called the sum-product algorithm. MacKay [5] showed that in practice moderate
length LDPC codes (103 104 bits) could attain near-Shannon limit performance.
These results triggered a similar explosion of research on LDPC codes, which are
currently seen as competitors to turbo codes.
1.1.2 Turbo Code and Iterative Decoding
The principle of iterative decoding employed in turbo codes is described next as

precursor to the iterative decoding schemes proposed in this work. As an example, a
rate 1/2 turbo code is considered. Rate of a channel code is the redundancy implicit
into the transmission of codeword. If the channel code (a.k.a. error correcting
code) maps k information bits to a codeword of length n bits, the code rate is
defined as r = k/n. Figure 1.1 depicts a standard turbo encoder. As seen in the
figure, the information sequence u is encoded by two rate 1/2 binary convolutional
encoders seperated by an N -bit interleaver , together with optional puncturing
mechanism. Thus, without the puncturer, the encoder is of rate 1/3, mapping N
bits to 3N code bits. This is called parallel concatenation of two codes, in contrast
with the serial concatenation schemes discussed in this work. Both the constituent
convolutional encoders, Encoder 1 and Encoder 2, are of recursive systematic variety,
5
u v
(0)
(1)
Encoder 1 v
g2(D)/g1(D)
(1) (2)
Puncturing v ,v
P Mechanism
u' Encoder 2 v
(2)
g2(D)/g1(D)
Figure 1.1: Turbo encoder [11].
with generator matrix of the form

h i
g2 (D)
GR (D) = 1 g1 (D)
(1.1.1)
The iterative turbo decoding system is shown in the Figure 1.2. Turbo decoder
derives its name from the principle of preheating air in an engine with its own exhaust
gases, similar to feedback provided in this decoder. Berrou et al. [4] discovered
an universal concept in soft-iterative decoding that is the key to achieving good
performance. It is the removal of the intrinsic information from the output APPs
(i)
L(i) (ul ), resulting in extrinsic APPs Le (ul ), which are then applied as a priori
(i)
input La (ul ) to the other decoder. Intrinsic information represents the soft channel
(i)
outputs Lc rl and the a priori inputs are already known prior to decoding. Extrinsic
information is the additional knowledge learned about an information bit during an
iteration. The removal of intrinsic information has the effect of reducing correlations
from one iteration to the next, thus allowing improved decoding performance with
increasing number of iterations.
In the figure, decoders 1 and 2 are maximum a posteriori (MAP) (BCJR [12])
decoders for the two constituent codes, is the same interleaver as in the encoder,
while 1 is the inverse operation of . The MAP decoder decides ul = +1 if
P (ul = +1|r) > P (ul = 1|r), and it decides ul = 1 otherwise. If the received
signal vector is represented as r, then L(ul ) is the log a posteriori probability (LAPP)
ratio defined as
P (ul = +1|r)
L(ul ) = log (1.1.2)
P (ul = 1|r)
6
(0) (1) (0) (2)

Lcrl Lcrl Lcrl Lcrl
P (2)
L (ul)
(1)
Le (ul) (2)
La (ul) P
-1
Decoder 1 Decoder 2
(1)
+ +- P Decision
(1) L (ul) - Lcrl(0)
La (ul)
-1
-
P (2)
++ (2)
L (ul) - Lcrl(0)
Le (ul)
Figure 1.2: Turbo Decoder
The signal is transmitted over a channel with noise power spectral density N0 ,
where Lc = 4Ec /N0 is defined as the channel reliability and Ec = rEb is the energy
per channel bit. The received signal vector r is composed of three components,
(0) (1) (2)
systematic bits rl , output from encoder 1 rl , and output from encoder 2 rl .
Based on these inputs, each MAP decoder computes L(ul ), where, for example
output of MAP decoder 1 can be written as
(0)
L(ul ) = Lc rl + L(1) (1)
a (ul ) + Le (ul ) (1.1.3)
The first term in (1.1.3), called the channel value, is the log-liklihood ratio (LLR) [13]
value of systematic part of the received signal. The second term represents any a
priori information about ul provided by a previous decoder, and the third term
represents extrinsic information that can be passed on to a subsequent decoder.
Thus, the two MAP decoders exchange extrinsic information for certain number of
iterations and hard decision is performed on the LLR output of one of the decoders
to obtain the decoded codeword.
1.2 Turbo-like Coding Schemes

The parallel concatenated structure of turbo code, employing interleavers for decor-
relating the bit output of constituent encoders, and the associated soft-iterative
decoding procedure, are the key elements that offer a previously elusive Shannon
capacity-limit performance, though at the cost of increased complexity. The practi-
cal success of the iterative turbo decoding algorithm has inspired its adaptation to
other code classes [14], like serially concatenated codes [15], turbo product codes [16].
7
Code concatenation constitutes a convenient technique for constructing powerful

codes capable of providing huge coding gains, while keeping the decoding complex-
ity manageable. The concept of serially concatenated codes having an outer and an
inner code in cascade was proposed way back in 1966 by Forney [17]. Intensive re-
search after the discovery of turbo codes have demonstrated that iterative decoding
techniques are not only applicable to concatenated codes, but also apply to numer-
ous other algorithm found in digital communication. Three types of concatenated
coding schemes studied in current work is introduced next.
1.2.1 Concatenated Coding and Decoding Schemes
Parallel Concatenated Scheme
Encoding and decoding scheme of parallel concatenated codes (PCC) were discussed
in the earlier section with turbo code as an example. The component codes are often
convolutional encoders, but binary Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem (BCH) codes are
also used. The turbo encoder in the Figure 1.1 consists of two parallel concatenated
convolutional codes, but this scheme can be extended to parallel concatenation of
more than two component codes, leading to multistage turbo codes [18].
Serially Concatenated Schemes
The basic structure of a serially concatenated scheme (SCC) with decoder is shown
in the Figure 1.3. The SCC encoder consists of an outer encoder (Encoder I) and an
inner encoder (Encoder II), interconnected by an interleaver. The interleaver scram-
bles the bits before they are passed on to next constituent encoder, which ensures
that even if a specific bit has been gravely contaminated by the channel, there is
chance that other constituent decoder is capable of providing more reliable informa-
tion regarding this bit. If iterative soft-decision decoding is used in the SCC decoder,
a performance similar to that of PCC may be achieved [15]. The SCC scheme is
quite general structure and many coding and detection schemes can be described as
serially concatenated scheme, such as turbo equalization [19], joint source-channel
decoding [2022], turbo multiuser detection [23], coded modulation [24]. A list of
8
u1 c1 u2 c2
Encoder I P Encoder II
e a
a L (u2) L (c1) e
L (c2) P-1 L (u1)
Decoder II Decoder I
a P e
L (u2) L (c1)
Figure 1.3: Two stage serially concatenated code: the encoder and iterative decoder
[14].
such SCC schemes with their inner and outer codes are shown in Table. 1.1. Similar
to turbo codes and PCC, a serially concatenated scheme may contain more than two
components. Figure 1.4 shows the schematic of a three-stage serially concatenated
code and its decoder. The bit input to the above mentioned encoders is ui and en-
coded output is shown as ci , where i is encoding stage. At the decoder, L indicates
the log-liklihood ratios (LLR), with superscript e and a indicating extrinsic and a
priori LLRs, respectively. Decoding is performed iteratively for certain number of
iterations, or when a correct codeword is detected.
Table 1.1: Different serial concatenated systems with iterative decoding [14].
Configuration Outer En-/Decoder Inner En-/Decoder
Serial Concatenated Code FEC En-/Decoder FEC En-/Decoder
LDPC Codes Check Nodes Variable Nodes
Turbo Equalization FEC En-/Decoder Multipath Channel/Equalizer
Turbo BICM FEC En-/Decoder Mapper/Demapper
Turbo Source-Channel Decoding Source En-/Decoder FEC En-/Decoder
Turbo CDMA FEC En-/Decoder Spreading Code/MUD
Turbo MIMO FEC En-/Decoder Mapper/MIMO Detector
1.2.2 Joint Source-Channel Coding
Another instance of concatenated coding scheme, where turbo principle has been
successfully applied is joint source-channel decoder. Consider a classic communica-
tion chain, where source encoder (performs data compression) removes redundancy
9
u1 c1 u2 c2 u3 c3
Encoder I P1 Encoder II P2 Encoder III
e a e a
a L (u3) L (c2) L (u2) L (c1) e
L (c3) P-1 P-1 L (u1)
Decoder III Decoder II Decoder I
a P e a P e
L (u3) L (c2) L (u2) L (c1)
Figure 1.4: Three stage serially concatenated code: encoders and iterative decoders
[14].
from the source signal, followed by a channel encoder that aims to reintroduce re-
dundancy in the compressed data in a efficiently controlled manner to cope with
transmission errors. Conventional communication systems have source and channel
decoders implemented separately and are based on Shannons source-channel sep-
aration theorem [1], which holds only for idealized conditions (with infinitely long
block length codes). Therefore, joint source-channel coding has gained considerable
attention from the research community as alternative to separate source-channel
coding. The key principle of joint source-channel decoder is to exploit jointly the
residual redundancy of the source-coded stream (i.e. exploiting the inefficiency of
the compression algorithm) and the redundancy introduced by the channel code to
correct the bit errors and find the most likely source symbol.
1.2.3 Joint Network-Channel Coding
Network coding [25, 26] is a technique to code the data packets at the nodes in a
packet network, in contrast to conventional networks where encoding is done only at
the source and intermediate nodes just forward the packets. A simple network coding
operation at a relay consists of just XORing the bits arriving from two sources and
forwarding it. Network coding can improve throughput, robustness and security of
data networks. Authors in [27,28] proposed joint network-channel coding schemes to
gain cooperative diversity in wireless networks to combat channel fading. A simple
model where diversity can be gained through network coding is the multiple-access
relay channel (MARC). Figure 1.5 depicts an example of MARC for cooperative
uplink of two mobile users (MU) with the help of an intermediate network coding
10
MU1
S1 S1
S3
S2 RN S2
MU2 BS
Figure 1.5: Uplink for two mobile users (MU1 and MU2) with the help of relay on
the MARC.
relay RN. One way to gain diversity through network coding for MARC with noisy
channels is to treat network and channel coding separately. Then, error control
coding is used for each transmission to transform the noisy channel to erasure-based
link. At the network layer, one performs network coding for the erasure-based
networks which is provided by the lower layers.
A relay can not only be used to gain diversity, but can also provide additional
redundancy which improves the performance compared to point-to-point communi-
cation if the relay has a better connection to the base station than mobile station. In
such cases also relay provide improved performance, even in the absence of fading.
The principle of joint network-channel coding is that redundancy in the network
code should be used to support the channel code for better error protection. It is
similar to source-channel coding discussed earlier where redundancy remaining after
source coding is utilized by channel code to combat noise.
1.3 Coding for Wireless Networks

A network is defined as a system with many senders or receivers. Such a system
contains many new elements in the communication problem: interference, coop-
eration and feedback [29]. These are the issues that are the domain of network
information theory, distributed source/channel coding and network coding. Exam-
ples of large communication networks include computer networks, satellite networks,
wireless sensor networks (WSN). Channel in a typical wireless network, e.g. WSN,
is basically a broadcast channel, for the ease of design and analysis, information
11
transmission through wireless channel can be decomposed into one of the following
fundamental forms of channel or links.
1. Point-to-point channel : Sender transmits information intended for a single

receiver.
2. Broadcast channel : A transmitter sends information over a common channel

intended for all the available receivers.
3. Multiple access channel : Two or more transmitter communicating to a single

receiver.
4. Relay channel : Relay channel is combination of broadcast and multiple access

channel. Sender and receiver communicated with the aid of an intermediate
node called relay.
1.3.1 Channel Models
In wireless environment, the magnitude and phase of the signal received, changes
with time and frequency. This is called fading and is caused by many factors, which
can be classified into two classes, large-scale propagation effects and small-scale
propagation effects [30]. Large scale propagation effects occur over long distances,
occur due to path loss and shadowing. On the other hand, small scale fading are more
frequent and occur due to constructive and destructive interference from different
multipath signals at the receiver. The properties of the variation of this combined
signal are normally described on a statistical basis. The received signal is said to be
in deep fade if at a given moment, all the phase shifts of these different versions of
a transmitted signal cause a destructive combination and the combined signal has
significantly reduced strength at the receiver. During fade event, communication
link suffers significantly more errors than the average error rate.
In this work, Rayleigh fading channel is considered which models many wireless
communication environments with no line of sight path between the transmitter and
receiver. The channel gain h is modeled as a complex Gaussian random process and
its two quadrature components are uncorrelated Gaussian random processes with
12
zero mean and variance 2 . The envelope of the received signal has a Rayleigh
probability distribution and its phase has a uniform distribution between /2 to
/2. The probability density function (PDF) of the envelope is given by
2
e
2 if 0
2
p() = (1.3.4)
0 if < 0
At the i-th signalling interval, the baseband equivalent of the received signal at the
front end of the receiver is then given as
yi = hi xi + ni (1.3.5)
where, yi is the received signal corresponding to the transmitted symbol xi . hi is

the Rayleigh distributed channel coefficient and ni is AWGN with noise PSD of N0 .
1.3.2 Cooperative Diversity in Wireless Networks
Diversity methods are very effective way of combating multi-path fading in a commu-
nication system. By diversity we mean that multiple independently faded versions
for each transmitted signal arrive at the receiver, so that the probability of all copies
of the transmitted signal experiencing a deep fade at the same time is significantly
reduced. Diversity is achieved in different ways, some of which includes
1. Temporal diversity: Different copies of signal corresponding to the same in-

formation are transmitted at different times with intervening intervals longer
than the channel coherence time. Automatic-Repeat-reQuest (ARQ) and error
correcting codes are examples of such an approach.
2. Frequency diversity: Diversity is provided in the frequency domain where same

information is sent using different carrier frequencies which are separated by
at least the coherence bandwidth of the channel.
3. Spatial diversity: Diversity is provided by transmitting the same (or depen-

dent) information in the spatial domain from multiple places or antennas that
are separated far enough that the received signals experience independent
fades.
13
Relay
Source Destination
Figure 1.6: A simple relaying scheme.
A wireless communication system can be designed to achieve diversity in one or mul-

tiple forms simultaneously. Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems have
gained significant popularity over recent years for achieving spatial diversity. MIMO
systems achieve diversity by using multiple antennas at transmitter or receiver. The
minimum distance between adjacent antennas must be at least half of the wave
length in order to let each transmit-receive antenna pair have independent channel
gain and to achieve full spatial diversity. This makes device having multiple antenna
significantly larger than one having single antenna and is not suitable for portable
devices, therefore, limiting their use in low cost wireless networks.
To avoid the problem of MIMO systems and to obtain spatial diversity, we con-
centrate on two practical methods in this work, namely, relaying and multiple de-
scription coding (MDC). Relaying can be considered a form of cooperative commu-
nication where another terminal forwards the information received from source to
the destination after amplifying or decoding it, which also helps achieve spatial di-
versity. The diversity offered by a cooperative system is called cooperative diversity
since diversity is achieved via the cooperation among multiple wireless nodes. A sim-
ple three-node cooperative wireless network is illustrated in the Figure 1.6. MARC
scheme illustrated in the Figure 1.5 is another example of cooperative diversity.
MDC divides the multimedia information into more than one data stream. The
streams are coded separately and transmitted over independent channels. At the
receiver these decoded data streams can be combined in synergy to obtain image
or video whose quality is better than that of individual stream. As more and more
data streams are decoded, quality of received multimedia information increases.
In this work, two of the commonly studied configurations of MDC are studied.
Figure 1.7(a)) shows quantizer based MDC [31], where multiple description quantizer
14
MD Decoder
Channel 1 Side
D1
Decoder 1
MD Central
Source D0
Encoder Decoder 0
Side
D2
Channel 2 Decoder 2
(a)
Receiver 1
Progressive FEC MD Wireless

source access
encoder
Encoder point
Receiver 2
(b)
Figure 1.7: Two common types of multiple-description coding, (a) Quantizer based
MDC, and (b) FEC based MDC.
produces two stream of samples which are source/channel coded and transmitted.
At the receiver when any one of the description is received and decoded, the signal
has distortion D1 or D2 . If both the descriptions are received and decoded error-
free, the resultant distortion will be D0 , where, D0 < D1 and D0 < D2 . FEC (or
channel code) based MDC creates n number of descriptions from a progressively
coded source and is obtained using erasure correction property of channel codes, as
shown in the Figure 1.7(b)).
1.4 Thesis Layout

Rest of the dissertation is organized as follows. Chapter 2 contains an exhaus-
tive literature survey related to iterative decoding, multiple description coding and
network-channel coding and research related to application of iterative decoding in
these areas. At the end of this chapter, motivation and objective of the current work
is stated. Proposed algorithm for iterative decoding of FEC based multiple descrip-
15
FEC based
MDC
Multiple Soft RS decoder Hard RS decoder
Description based (Ch. 3) based (Ch. 4)
Application Coding
of Iterative MDSQ based MDC
Decoding (Ch. 5)
Network
Network coding for
Coding
MARC (Ch. 6)
Figure 1.8: Logical progression of chapters.
tions with soft RS decoder is presented in Chapter 3. Two different algorithms for
iterative decoding of FEC based multiple descriptions with hard RS decoder are
described in Chapter 4. In Chapter 5, schemes for iterative soft decision source-
channel decoding of multiple description image over wireless channel are presented.
In Chapter 6, our contribution in applying iterative decoding to network-channel
coding in the context of cooperative space-time transmission and multiple access re-
lay channel is explained. Finally, our contributions and present potential for future
work is given in Chapter 7. A logical progression of chapters in this dissertation is
shown in the Figure 1.8.
******
Chapter 2
Background Overview and Related

Work
The use of mobile communication and multimedia communication has witnessed an

enormous increase in the last decade. There has been widespread use of wireless
medium for last mile delivery of data and multimedia information. However, sig-
nificant challenge is posed by the scarcity of wireless bandwidth, the time-varying
characteristics of the channel, and the power limitation of the wireless devices. This
work involves data and multimedia information transmission over wireless channels.
Since, the current work is based on the application of iterative decoding in the
area of multiple description coding and network coding, we review the existing liter-
ature on iterative decoding, multiple description coding, relay channel and network
coding in this chapter. Existing literature on iterative decoding algorithms for these
techniques are introduced and our research is placed in the context of current litera-
ture. Though, the principles of iterative decoding have been introduced in Chapter
1, this chapter begins with highlighting some of the important works in this field.
2.1 Iterative Decoding and Turbo-like Codes

Though LDPC code and its iterative decoding was discovered long back [7], discovery
of turbo codes by Berrou, Glavieux and Thitimajshima [4] has revolutionized wire-
less communication. Using two parallel concatenated convolutional codes, seperated
16
17
by an interleaver and iterative decoder based on exchanging extrinsic information

between two BCJR blocks, channel coding close to Shannon limit [1] became pos-
sible with moderate computational complexity. Because of this, turbo codes find
application in the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) [32], Long
Term Evolution (LTE) [33], and Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access
(WiMAX) [34]. The concept of passing extrinsic information in channel decoding
has later been applied to other channel coding concepts, such as Serially Concate-
nated Convolutional Codes (SCCC) [35], hybrid concatenated codes [36], or the
concatenation of LDPC and convolutional codes [37], to name only a few.
Besides SCCC, the concatenation of other channel codes has also led to impres-
sive results. Repeat accumulator (RA) codes are another important class of codes
where the outer code consists of a simple repetition code and the inner code of an
accumulator (rate-1 convolutional code) [38]. An extension of RA codes, known
as Irregular Repeat-Accumulate (IRA) codes leads to further performance improve-
ments [39].
It was shown that iteratively decoded codes outperform the conventional con-
volutional codes [40]. Best waterfall performance is demonstrated by PCC, i.e., its
BER starts to drop rapidly for very low values of Eb /N0 . But it generally results
in a visible error floor. This means that after a certain increase in Eb /N0 , the BER
does not drop rapidly anymore, but decreases slowly. The SCC and the LDPC code
do not exhibit this error floor due to the better interleaver gain properties [15, 40].
LDPC codes possess several other distinct advantages over turbo codes [41].
First, belief-propagation decoding for LDPC codes is fully parallelizable and can
potentially be accomplished at significantly greater speeds. Second, very low com-
plexity decoders that closely approximate belief propagation in performance may be
implemented. Third, LDPC code being a block code, decoding to a correct codeword
is a detectable event and additional overhead for cyclic redundancy check (CRC) is
avoided. One practical challenge of LDPC code is that its generator matrix may
not be sparse, and hence, encoding complexity is high. One way to get around this
problem is to slightly modify the construction of codes from bipartite graphs to a
cascade of such graphs [42]. Regular LDPC codes are those for which all nodes of
18
the same type have the same degree. On the other hand, in an irregular LDPC code,
the degrees of each set of nodes are chosen according to some distribution. Luby
et al. [42, 43] found that by using irregular graphs and optimizing degree sequences,
they could approach the capacity of erasure channel, i.e., achieve small error proba-
bilities at code rates of nearly 1 p, where p is the erasure probability. Richardson,
Urbanke et al. [44] used a technique called density evolution to design long irregular
LDPC codes that for all practical purposes achieve the Shannon limit on binary
AWGN channels.
Recently, a new class of codes, called fountain or rateless codes, were proposed
for channels whose statistics are not known a priori. Fountain codes encode a finite
length information sequence into a potentially infinite stream of encoded symbols.
The receiver then accumulates the noisy symbols until it finds that it has enough
for successful decoding [3]. Luby Transform (LT) codes of Luby [45] were one of the
first codes of this type. These were extended to create a new code called Raptor
code [46], in which an inner LT code is concatenated with an outer fixed-length,
high-rate LDPC code. Raptor codes permit linear time encoding and remove the
problem of error floors. Both these codes work well in erasure channels. Raptor code
also appear to work well in general noisy channels, like AWGN channels [47]. Since,
Raptor code is a serial concatenation of LT and LDPC code, it can be iteratively
decoded using message passing algorithm. In [48], performance of Raptor codes of
low-to-moderate rates with iterative decoding is evaluated over memoryless, as well
as correlated, fading channels. Raptor code is decoded over wireless fading channel
by performing joint channel estimation and iterative decoding at the receiver [49].
2.2 Multiple Description Coding Approaches
2.2.1 Multiple Description Quantizers
Image transmission through noisy channel has its own characteristics. Because of
limited wireless channel bandwidth, image need to be compressed, with lossless or
lossy schemes, depending on the application. But compressed image contains less
redundancy and it makes the image more vulnerable to channel errors. The conven-
19
tional technique to combat transmission error is forward error correction (FEC) or

channel coding [5055]. FEC involves addition of redundant data to the compressed
signal, which allows the decoder to correct errors up to certain number of bits or
symbols. Moreover, type of FEC and its rate must be decided based on worst case
channel scenario. For channels having highly variable quality, design for worst case
requires a very powerful code, and hence high amount of redundancy. This results
in severe reduction of the gain obtained by compression. On the other hand, in case
of burst errors, channel is reasonably good most of the times except during burst of
errors. In such channels, error correction capability is more often exceeded during
error free phase and additional redundancy is wasted.
Besides this, there are practical problems associated with packet and wireless
networks. Current systems typically generate compressed multimedia information
with a progressive source coder (e.g. JPEG2000, SPHIT)and deliver it with TCP
[56]. A single multimedia file can not be put in a single packet for transmission
due to delay considerations. Hence, a compressed multimedia file is split into L
packets and the receiver constructs the image as the packets arrive. In a progressive
transmission, image quality improves steadily as the number of consecutive packets
arrive, starting from the first. Since, in a progressively coded source, the bits in the
beginning of the stream is more important and absence of preceding bits makes the
later bits useless, the order of packets arriving the receiver is critical. For example,
if packets numbered {1,2,3,5,6, ...} are received, the quality is proportional to the
reception of only first three packets. Thus, progressive transmission are best suited
for the channel where packets are received in order without loss. The reason for
failure of conventional systems can be attributed to the fact that source coding or
compression is totally oblivious of delivery mechanism.
The framework for transmission of multimedia information through wireless
channel should jointly utilize the properties of source and channel codes, offer great
robustness and adaptability to adverse transmission conditions, while making effi-
cient use of limited wireless network resources [57]. Multiple description coding,
which is a joint source and channel coding method, has proven to be an effective
way to provide error resilience with a relatively small reduction in compression ratio.
20
It assumes that there are several parallel channels between source and destination,
and that some of the channels may be temporarily down or are suffering through
deep fade. Furthermore, the each path is independent and the probability that all
paths are simultaneously fading is small. These channels could be physically dis-
tinct paths formed by several nodes in a multihop wireless network, or can be virtual
channels obtained by frequency or space division multiplexing. In a simple case of
MDC consisting of two channels, a source is decomposed into two descriptions with
side rates R1 and R2 . The reception and decoding of these descriptions individually
leads to side distortions D1 and D2 , respectively. But if both the descriptions are
correctly decoded, it results in central distortion of D0 D1 (and D2 ). In general
for MDC, the region of achievable rate-distortion is bounded by [29]
R1 + R2 R(D0 )
R1 R(D1 ) (2.2.1)
R2 R(D2 )
When it comes to practical implementation, the main problem is how to gen-

erate descriptions such that the resulting rates, distortions and complexity satisfy
some prescribed criteria. One of the oldest and simplest method to obtain multiple
descriptions is to separate the data into odd and even numbered samples [58]. If
one of the descriptions is lost, the corresponding side decoder utilizes the correlation
between lost and received description in order to estimate the lost one. It is critical
that the odd and even numbered samples have redundancy [56]. If the redundancy
was removed before even/odd separation, the decoding performance may not be
acceptable.
One of the first multiple description image coder was proposed by Vaishampayan
and Vinay [59]. They applied multiple description scalar quantizer to the DCT co-
efficients of JPEG coder. The resulting indices of the two descriptions were entropy
coded separately. Servetto et al. [60] presented a multiple description image coder
based on application of MDSQ on wavelet coefficients of image. This allows cre-
ation of two wavelet coded descriptions which are then further coded with SPIHT.
A powerful source coding scheme in the form of trellis-coded quantization was in-
troduced by Marcellin and Fischer [61] for memoryless and Gauss-Markov sources.
21
The success and advantage of trellis coded quantization was extended to multiple
description coding in [62]. In [63], authors present a scheme for construction of
multiple description trellis coded quantizers, which use tensor product of trellises
which is applicable to multiple description coding. An integrated robust multiple
description coding scheme which uses wavelet tree coding and error resilient entropy
coding was proposed by Song et al. in [64].
Recently, problem of increasing the robustness to bit errors for two description
scalar quantizers was addressed in [65]. In [66], MDC is applied for protecting color
images with compressed sensing. In [67], dynamic multiple description wavelet based
image coding using enhanced particle swarm optimization was proposed for effective
multimedia transmission in the dynamically changing network topologies such as
mobile ad-hoc networks.
Iterative Decoding Techniques Applied to Multiple Descriptions
Recent advances in iterative decoding has also been applied to multiple description
coding. In order to resist packet losses and achieve good compression performance,
an entropy-constrained multiple description trellis coded quantizer was combined
with a variable length code in [68]. The proposed iterative decoding algorithm ex-
ploits the redundancy between the generated descriptions. Barros et al. proposed a
turbo cross decoding scheme for multiple descriptions in [69]. By determining the
correlation properties of multiple description block codes, a soft-in/soft-out algo-
rithm was derived which provided significant gains in terms of end to end distor-
tion. Authors were able to demonstrate additional gain by concatenating multiple
description codes and convolutional codes and performing iterative decoding be-
tween them, similar to turbo decoding principle. Wu and Chang [70] presented a
new multiple description iterative source-channel decoding scheme which allows to
exploit the source residual redundancy as well as inter-description correlation.
2.2.2 FEC Based Multiple Description Coding
FEC based MDC has received considerable attention for transmission of progres-
sively coded multimedia bitstreams over fading channel. Progressive bitstream is
22
Description 1 1 2 4 6 I CRC RSCC Parity
FEC codewords
Description 2 P 3 5 7 I CRC RSCC Parity
Description 3 P P P 8 I CRC RSCC Parity
Description n P P P P I CRC RSCC Parity

1 2 3 p
Figure 2.1: Priority encoding for FEC based multiple description coding. P and I
indicates parity and information symbols of FEC code, respectively.
one in which symbols of compressed source are ordered in terms of their importance.
Wavelet based SPHIT coder [71] is example of such an algorithm generating pro-
gressive bitstream. In FEC based MDC, symbols from a progressively coded source
are encoded in such a way that contiguous bits are spread across multiple packets
instead of being in same packet [50, 51]. The design of FEC is constrained in such a
way that symbols in the begining of the stream are provided more protection than
subsequent symbols and that too must be done within the given bit budget. In FEC
based MDC, information symbols are encoded into n packets using (n, ki ), i = 1, ..., p
RS (RS) codes. RS codes are effective when errors occur in bursts and their location
in the transmitted symbol sequence is known. Each source symbols is formed by
combining several bits and typically takes the form of a byte. RS codewords are
arranged vertically, whereas, packets are obtained along horizontal rows. Stronger
error protection (more RS code parity symbols) is provided to the symbols at the
beginning of the source data stream. In the Figure 2.1 first column of FEC code-
word consists of one information symbol and n 1 parity symbols and is encoded
by (n, 1) RS code. Similarly, second and third columns are encoded with (n, 2) RS
code. Thus, source symbols are provided with varying degree of protection. This
scheme, known as priority encoding transmission (PET) was first proposed in [72].
The amount of protection provided is based on the source rate-distortion curve [29]
and channel state. Each packet is them encoded using convolutional code (after
being appended with CRC error detection) to protect it from bit errors introduced
by the wireless channel. At the receiver side, erroneous descriptions are detected
with the aid of CRC and are declared as erasured. RS code is then used to recover
23
the erased description.

FEC based MDC can be considered a specific case of product code structure
of [17], where RS code is concatenated with recursive systematic convolutional code
(RSCC) to obtain improved performance over fading channel. One of the first
application of FEC based multiple description coding for transmission of image in
wireless channel was reported in [73]. This scheme applied Lagrange multiplier
based optimization algorithm given by Puri and Ramchandran [74] for allocation
of parity symbols. Other algorithms for optimal allocation of FEC parity symbols
were proposed in [75,76]. A scheme employing turbo codes and RS codes in order to
deal effectively with burst errors was proposed in [77]. These authors also proposed
an algorithm for optimal allocation of RS symbols using dynamic programming
approach.
FEC based MDC has also been applied for improving performance against deep
fades in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) networks. In [78],
Toni et al. study the transmission of progressively coded image bitstreams using
channel coding in a 2-D time-frequency resource block in an OFDM network under
different physical environments. By decoupling the time domain and frequency
domain channel variations, a 2-D channel coding scheme was proposed which was
able to utilize the time and frequency diversities simultaneously. Chang et al. [79]
analyzed the performance of n-channel FEC based multiple description coding for
OFDM network in frequency selective slow-fading Rayleigh channel. In [80] an
iterative scheme for decoding FEC based multiple description code over OFDM
network is proposed. Most of the research on FEC based MDC assume equal channel
protection for all the descriptions, i.e. rate of the inner channel code is same for all
descriptions. Bais et al. [81] optimize the channel protection at the packet level to
maximize the expected reconstruction quality at wireless clients in a scenario where
MDC packets are broadcast over a network.
2.2.3 Multiple Description Transform Coding
MDC using the transform coding was first introduced by Wang et al. [82] and later
extended in [56,83,84]. The basic principle of multiple description transform coding
24
(MDTC) for two descriptions is to introduce a controlled amount of correlation be-

tween two originally uncorrelated variables using a pairwise correlating transform.
This is in contrast to conventional multiple description where correlation of original
source is reduced. The general coding framework is as follows. The input image
is decorrelated using a proper transform like Fourier or wavelet. The transform
coefficients are ordered according to their variances and formed into pairs. Cor-
relating transform is applied on these pairs, i.e. two uncorrelated coefficient gives
rise to two correlated coefficients [85], which forms the coefficients for two descrip-
tions.This controlled correlation between the two descriptions is used to estimate
one description from the other. If both the descriptions are available, exact value
of variable can be determined by taking inverse transform. In [82], this method is
extended to more general transforms and non-orthogonal transforms [86]. Efficiency
of non-orthogonal transform is greater compared to orthogonal transforms because
they can work on larger redundancy interval.
A similar approach to correlating transform was given by Goyal et al. [8789].
They have developed an approach to produce M descriptions of an N tuple source.
In recent time, Khelil et al. [90] extend the principle of multiple description coding
using correlating transform to wavelet transformed image. In [91], authors proposed
use of genetic algorithm for finding the optimum uniform quantization steps in case
of multiple description transform coding.
2.3 Iterative Source-Channel Decoding

Earlier Works on Non-iterative Source-Channel Decoding
Shannons source-channel separation principle [29] states that, a stationary ergodic

source with average distortion D can be transmitted over a channel with band-
width expansion factor not lower than R(D)/C channel symbols per source sample,
where R(D) is the source rate distortion function and C is the channel capacity [92].
Bandwidth expansion factor can be defined as number of channel symbols per source
symbols. In other words, if the minimum achievable source coding rate of a given
source is below the channel capacity, the source can be reliably transmitted over
25
the channel by performing appropriate encoding and decoding operations. This

principle also ensures that optimal performance can be achieved by independently
designing the source coding and channel coding schemes. One more requirement
for Shannons separation theorem is that codeword block lengths are asymptoti-
cally large. Vembu et al. [93] show an instance where the separation theorem is not
followed and conclude that care should be taken before applying this theorem to
non-stationary probabilistic models. Thus the assumptions of source-channel sepa-
ration have limited validity for transmission over non stationary channels like fading
wireless channels [14].
On the other hand, separate source-channel coding may incur practical difficulties
due to non ideal behavior of finite length, finite complexity, source and channel
codes. In Shannons theorem, it is assumed that source is stationary and is losslessly
encoded with entropy coder having equal significance and error sensitivity. These
assumptions have limited validity in case of multimedia signals like image, audio and
video [14]. Even in state of the art image and video codecs, delay and complexity
considerations imply the use of short block lengths. Also, the entropy coders tend
to be very sensitive to errors and any residual errors in channel decoder leads to loss
of synchronization and cause catastrophic error. Some source coding methods with
good synchronization properties includes [94, 95] and references therein.
For these reasons, joint consideration of source and channel coding is necessary
for realizing communication systems with good performance. Several techniques of
source-channel coding has been introduced in the last decade. These techniques can
be categorized into two major classes [40]. In the first category, channel proper-
ties are used as parameters and is used throughout the design of robust encoding
schemes. For example, in [96] quantizer and the encoder/decoder pair are jointly
optimized, and an iterative algorithm for obtaining a locally optimum system is
developed. In [97] a tradeoff between lossy source coding and block channel coding
for a binary-symmetric channel was derived. One of the major drawback of these
schemes is that they have to be optimized for every specific channel conditions. In
the second category, source statistics is utilized in decoding the channel code which
avoids re-optimization for every channel scenario. Some of the earlier research in this
26
s Source e u Channel c Symbol x

Encoder P Encoder Mapper
a e ch
+ n
^
s Source LSD(e) -1
LCD(u) Channel LCD (c) Symbol y
Decoder P Decoder Demapper
e a
LSD(e) LCD(u)
P
Figure 2.2: Block diagram of a generic baseband transceiver system with ISCD.
category are as follows. Hagenauer [98] proposed a source-channel decoder where

Viterbi decoding algorithm for binary trellises is modified by using a priori or a pos-
teriori information about the source bit probability for better decoding in addition
to soft inputs and channel state information. In [99], a joint source channel coding
scheme for error resilient image transmission was proposed, where instead of com-
pressing the image using the classical entropy coder, the redundancy of the image
is exploited by using turbo codes for both data compression and error protection.
Iterative Source-Channel Decoding
In iterative source-channel decoding (ISCD), in each decoding step source statistics

are iteratively calculated (a priori information) in a manner similar to the turbo
decoding. ISCD exploits the inefficiencies of source encoder by utilizing the residual
redundancy in the compressed data. On the other hand, redundancy can be delib-
erately allowed at the output of source codec to increase the error robustness and
aid in iterative decoding. Figure 2.2 shows a generic baseband transceiver system
where decoding is performed using ISCD. The input s to the source encoder is in
the form of frame of bits, which are compressed to e. The frame e interleaved to
get u and encoded by a channel encoder resulting in a bit vector c. In this work,
channel code considered is RSCC or LDPC code, however any channel code with
soft-input soft-output (SISO) decoder can be used.
After channel coding, bits in c are mapped to complex signal space points x
and transmitted over the channel. A second interleaver can be placed between
channel encoder and symbol mapper if iterative decoding is performed between
27
these two stages. Interleaver is also added in case of fading channel or if higher
order modulation is used. At the receiver, the demapper generates LLR-values
Lch
CD (c) from the noisy channel observations y. Subsequently, channel SISO decoder
and source SISO decoder exchange extrinsic information, LeCD (u) and LeSD (e). Note
that after deinterleaving/interleaving, extrinsic information of current stage becomes
a priori information (LaSD (e) and LaCD (u)) for the next stage. After a fixed number
of iterations, the source decoder generates estimates s of the transmitted source bits.
Some of the earlier works in this area are [100104]. In the literature ISCD has
been applied to both variable length and fixed length source codes. In [21, 105, 106]
authors exploit the efficienty of turbo decoding by integrating the variable length
codes (VLC) in a iterative decoding process. The decoding scheme considered a
VLC concatenated with a RSCC, and substantial gains were obtained with iterative
decoding. Iterative decoding by serial concatenation of VLC with a turbo code and a
LDPC code were proposed in [107109]. Bursalioglu et al. [92] proposed a lossy joint
source-channel coding scheme using Raptor code. Raptor codes [110] are a class of
rateless codes designed for transmission over erasure channel with unknown capacity.
Use of Raptor codes allows continuum of coding rates with a single basic decoding
algorithm. In recent times, Chase-like decoding [111] was applied for SISO decoding
of VLC, which in turn was applied to ISCD [112115]. Chase-like decoding have the
advantage of lower computational complexity compared to trellis based decoding
of VLC. A new scheme was proposed in [112] for joint source-channel decoding of
arithmetic codes based on maximum a posteriori sequence estimation. This scheme
performs Chase-like decoding using a priori knowledge of the source symbol sequence
and the compressed bit-stream length. In [113], Zribi et al. extend the Chase-like
SISO decoding scheme to Huffman code and consider a serial concatenation of this
decoder with channel code. Significant performance improvement was obtained with
iterative decoding between the constituent decoders.
Another area of ISCD which has received considerable attention from research
community is joint source channel coding of correlated sources. Instead of utilizing
the residual redundancy after source coding, there are several research which focus
on exploiting the memory structure of the source directly at the decoder [116]. This
28
type of joint source-channel coding has two major advantages. At the transmitter,
the information symbols are directly encoded by the channel code and no separate
source encoder is required. This simplifies the encoder structure and reduces the
power consumption. Redundancy provided by the memory structure of source im-
proves the error correction capability of the system. Designs with Hidden Markov
model source and turbo code was presented in [117119]. Design combining LDPC
codes and hidden Markov model was presented in [120, 121]. Similar improvements
were obtained with Irregular Repeat Accumulate (IRA) codes in [22] and with linear
systematic block codes [122]. Fresia et al. [123] proposed a scheme based on rap-
tor codes, which are a new class of rateless codes, for decoding Markov correlated
sources. Kim et al. [124] study joint source-channel decoding for non-binary source
samples, where source samples are modelled as the output of a multi-state Markov
chain (MC). A simplified Markov chain model was proposed where the multi-state
Markov chain is replaced with multiple number of two-state Markov chains, each of
which exploits bit-level correlation of samples.
Recently, motivated by the joint source-channel decoding (JSCD) principle of
exploiting the source redundancy, authors study the application of ISCD conceived
for distributed video coding, where the video signal is modeled using iterative
horizontal-vertical scanline model relying on a first-order Markov process [125]. Re-
search in [126] exploit the redundancy of language-based source for iterative source
channel decoding of polar code. To improve the performance of JSCD, a prac-
tical and efficient algorithm was proposed in [127], in which the performance of
the JSCD is enhanced by the additional iteration to exchange additive information
between multiple sources. An improved source APP decoding approach was pro-
posed for packetized variable-length encoded Markov sources [128]. The authors
also proposed a recursive implementation based on a three-dimensional joint trellis
for symbol decoding of binary RSCC.
29
2.4 Cooperative Diversity in Relay Networks

The main idea of cooperative network is that of resource sharing among the multiple
nodes. Sharing resources like power and computation with neighboring nodes can
lead to saving of overall network resources. Mesh networks like wireless sensor
network provide ample oppertunity to reap the benefits of user cooperation. In
contrast to conventional communication networks, the channel is not just one link
but the network itself [129]. Cooperation is possible in a network when number of
terminals is more than two. A three terminal network, known in the literature as
relay channel (Figure 2.3), is the simplest case of cooperative network. Our emphasis
of discussion shall be relay channel in the next section.
2.4.1 Three Terminal Relay Network
Basics of Relaying
Relay network is a three terminal communication system, with terminals labeled the
source (S), the relay (R), and the destination (D). The objective of such a system is
to communicate information generated at S to D. The relay R aids in transmitting
information without actually being a source or sink. The signal transmitted from
the source is X and is received by relay as V . The signal transmitted from relay
is W , and the signal received at the destination is Y . Conceptually, relaying is
done in two phases. In the first phase P1, called broadcast (BC) phase, S transmits
and (R, D) receive. The second phase is multiple access (MAC) phase in which
(S, R) transmit and D receives. This distinction between phases is conceptual only
since for communication both phases may take place simultaneously. According
to [129], there are four different models of relaying based on the above two phases
of transmission.
1. P1: S transmits and (R, D) receives; P2: (S, R) transmit and D receives.
2. P1: S transmits and R receives; P2: (S, R) transmit and D receives.
3. P1: S transmits and (R, D) receives; P2: R transmit and D receives.

30
R
V
W
X Y D
S
P1 P2
Figure 2.3: Relay communication with three terminals
4. P1: S transmits and R receives; P2: R transmit and D receives. (Multi-hop

communication).
First model is the most general and earlier information theoretic results on relay
channel were based on this model. In the second model D ignores the signal from S in
the BC phase, whereas, in the third model, S does not transmit in the second phase.
The fourth model is simply a multi-hop communication where relay only forwards
the received message to D and D can not directly receive from S. Unlike the first
three models, multi-hop communication does not have the benefit of diversity gain.
Next, we touch upon the many approaches to relay based cooperative diversity
proposed over the years. In case of direct or point-to-point link a single user com-
municates with a single destination. Three terminal relay channel was introduced
by van der Meulen [130], where he gave the upper and lower bound on the capacity
of relay channel. In [131], relay system was studied in the context of Aloha system.
Most prominent work in this field has been the paper of Cover and El Gamal [132].
In this work, authors evaluated the capacities of the Gaussian relay channel and an
achievable lower bound to the capacity of the general relay channel is established.
Due to the difficulty of finding new and better information theoretic results, and
practical challenges of implementing user cooperation, research interest in relaying
and user cooperation waned in early 80s [129].
One of the prominent works in recent times that received considerable attention
is [133, 134]. In this work, Sendonaris et al. proposed user cooperation as form of
diversity and show its benefit. Other important research which studied the perfor-
mance of different relaying protocols in fading environment are [135, 136]. In [136]
space-time codes were applied for obtaining cooperative diversity in relay networks.
31
Kramer et al. [137] gave a new set of insights into the information theoretic as-
pects of coding for relay channel, where authors study two basic relaying schemes -
decode-and-forward and compress-and-forward. Recent spur of activities in the field
of wireless sensor networks have also resulted in some fundamental research in relay
networks. In one of the most discussed work, Gupta and Kumar [138] studied the
transport capacity of wireless networks. The work measured the end-to-end sum
throughput of the network multiplied by the end-to-end distance. Related publica-
tions also includes [139141].
To harvest the gains predicted by information theoretic analysis, suitable coding
schemes are needed that can approach the fundamental limits of the relay channel.
Coded cooperation [142, 143] was one of the earliest techniques to obtain coopera-
tion between relay nodes using RSCC and turbo codes. In [144], Valenti and Zhao
used distributed turbo codes to approach the information-theoretic bound on outage
event probability of decode-and-forward relaying. Zhang and Duman [145] devel-
oped capacity approaching turbo coding schemes for half-duplex relay systems and
in [146] a full duplex scheme with iterative decoding was proposed. Recent ad-
vancements in LDPC codes have also been applied to relay channel. Chakrabartiet
al. [147] proposed LDPC code designs for half duplex relay channel. Their designs are
based on the information theoretic random coding scheme for decode-and-forward
relaying. This and other similar schemes [148150] utilized density evolution tech-
niques to search for optimized irregular LDPC ensembles operating at two different
rates. Nguyen et al. [151] proposed high-performance protograph-based LDPC cod-
ing scheme for half duplex relay channels.
2.4.2 Diversity through Network Coding
Network coding was first proposed by Ahlswede et al. [152] to enhance the capacity
of noiseless wired network. The main idea of network coding is to allow coding at
the relay nodes, in exchange for network capacity gain [153]. This is in contrast to
conventional networks where relay or intermediate nodes just forward the informa-
tion. Increase in throughput by the use of network coding was illustrated by the
famous example of Ahlswede, as shown in the Figure 2.4. This network is referred
32
y
1 t1
y y
x y
s 3 4
x y x y
x x
2 x t2
Figure 2.4: The butterfly network: Example of network coding in wireline network
[152].
to as butterfly network, which is a multicast network with one source node and two
sink nodes. In this network, every edge represents a directed link that is capable
of carrying a single packet reliably. There are two packets, x and y, present at the
source node s, and we wish to send these two packets to both the sinks, t1 and t2 . In
this capacitated network, the desired multicast connection can be established only
if one of the intermediate nodes breaks from the traditional routing paradigm and
performs a coding operation. As seen in the figure, network coding is performed
at the node 3, which is simply binary sum or XOR operation between the bits of
two incoming packets. Thus if the input packets of node 3 are x and y, the net-
work coded output is x y. The destination can decode the received packets by
performing the same operation. Sink t1 receives packet y and recovers the packet x
by performing further XOR of y with x y. Similarly, sink t2 recovers its packets.
Thus, the butterfly network illustrates that network coding can increase throughput
for multicast in a wireline network. The whole communication of two packets is
completed in nine transmissions. Without network coding, it would require more
number of transmissions to communicate the two packets.
The pioneering work of [152] led to explosion of research on network coding.
Though most of these studies have focused on wired and error free networks, there
is some initial work [154] investigating network coding in wireless scenarios. Since
noiseless assumptions are no longer valid for wireless channel, network coding for
wireless channels may incorporate some form of error correction. Network coding
for wireless channels can utilize broadcast nature of wireless channel and should
be designed taking into consideration challenges like noise, fading and inter-symbol
interference. Schemes to obtain cooperative diversity through network coding to
33
S1 S1
x x
RN 1 BS BS
x y
RN 2 +RN
y y
S2 S2
(a) (b)
Figure 2.5: The uplink for two mobile stations (S1 and S2 ) with cooperative diversity.
(a) Diversity obtained by simple relaying, (b) Network coded diversity [28].
combat fading in wireless channel were proposed in [153, 155, 156]. Network coding
for wireless channel not only allows diversity gain, but also allows trade-off between
diversity gain and throughput. A simple model where diversity can be obtained with
network coding is shown in the Figure 2.5, where two mobile users (S1 and S2 ) are
transmitting packets to the base station (BS). With conventional relaying (Figure
2.5(a)), two mobile users will require two separate relays (or a single relay used at
two different time slots) for transmitting to the BS. If the mobile users transmit
cooperatively with the help of network coding at the relay node (RN), only one
transmission from relay is sufficient to obtain same diversity gain for both mobile
stations.
One approach to gain diversity through network coding for multiple access relay
channel (MARC) with noisy channels is to decode network and channel code sepa-
rately. The channel coding used in the physical layer transform the noisy channels to
erasure based links. At the network layer, if information packet from one of the user
is lost, it can be recovered easily by simple XOR operation between the packet re-
ceived from other mobile user and RN. However, a relay not only provides diversity,
but can also provide additional capacity in exchange for diversity. This additional
redundancy improves performance compared to point-to-point communication if the
relay has better connection to the base station than mobile station.
Iterative Decoding of Network-Channel Codes
In the earlier discussion, application of network coding in network layer were only
considered and it was assumed that the lower layers deliver error free packets with the
34
help of channel coding. Similar to the joint source-channel coding (Sec. 2.3), Hausl
and Dupraz [28] proposed that in joint network-channel coding, where redundancy
in the network code is used to support the channel code for better error correction.
Again similar to source-channel coding, Effros et al. [157] stated that capacity can
only be achieved by treating network and channel coding jointly in a wireless relay
network. Del Ser et al. [158] proposed a joint source-channel-network decoding and
turbo equalization scheme for MARC. Focusing on densely deployed wireless sensor
networks, Del Ser et al. [159], proposed a joint source-channel-network coding scheme
for MARC. They assumed the correlateion between the information from two mobile
used to be hidden Markov model (HMM) [160] correlated and apply blind estimation
of HMM parameters at the receiver. Menghwar et al. [161,162] investigated a scheme
in which space-time coded cooperative nodes are opportunistically aided by a relay
node which performs networks coding. In [163], authors combine network coding
with full diversity channel coding to give rise to a new family of semi-random full-
diversity joint network-channel LDPC codes.
Some recent research related to network coded cooperation are as follows. The
diversity order attainable by network coded cooperation with channel coding in
a network topology with multiple sources, one relay and in the presence of fast
Rayleigh fading was analyzed in [164]. In [165], authors studied analog network
coding in the MARC with multiple relays and provided closed-form expressions of
the optimal power to be allocated to the sources and the relays. A generalized analog
network coding scheme for a non-orthogonal MARC was proposed in [166], where two
sources transmit their information simultaneously to the destination with the help
of a relay. An estimate-and-forward protocol in MARC was designed in [167] where
two correlated sources transmit their information to the common destination with
the help of a relay. The network-coded soft symbols contain redundant information
due to the correlated sources, which were compressed before being forwarded.
35
2.5 Motivation and Problem Formulation

Based on the survey of state-of-the-art, it was found that a significant number
of literature consider transmission of MDC over on-off channel, like packet net-
work [56, 60, 75]. Recent research to adapt such schemes for noisy and fading chan-
nel use the similar underlying assumption that the descriptions are either decoded
error-free or are completely discarded in case of any error [73, 7679, 81]. This ap-
proach is more suited to packet loss channel, where packets are either completely
lost or are received error-free, rather than wireless channels where noise and fading
impact only some of the bits in a packet or description. It is more efficient not to
discard the erroneous packets completely, but utilize channel reliability information
for correcting the errors. A wide variety of channel coding and interleaving tech-
niques can be applied for mitigation of fading and noise [54,55,99]. Since, output of
a wireless channel can be expressed in the form of soft-values or log-likelihood ratios,
they provide a significant gain in decoding channel codes compared to the case of
hard-decision decoding [49] or on-off channels. Therefore, application of iterative
soft decision decoding into existing multiple description coding schemes is proposed
for improving the receiver performance [168170].
Another important observation which inspires the application of iterative decod-
ing is that many coding schemes proposed in literature could be considered instances
of concatenated or product codes [22,77,171]. Such a concatenated structure can be
found in source-channel coding [21, 100, 113115], where turbo-like iterative decod-
ing can be applied between source and channel decoder. Also, FEC based multiple
description code is an example of product code which consists of two different types
of channel codes, namely RS code and RSCC, arranged vertically and horizontally
in a two dimensional setup. This is also well suited for heterogeneous network sce-
nario, where data can encounter packet losses due to congestion or link loss and can
so incur random bit errors in wireless channel. RS code is more suited for erasure
correction, whereas, RSCC is more efficient in correcting random bit errors. Though
many different schemes for FEC based multiple description code has been proposed,
none of them consider interaction (exchange of soft decisions) between the con-
stituent codes. Turbo-like decoding schemes were presented where both the channel
36
codes (RS and RSCC) exchange information between the constituent decoders and
improved decoding performance in terms of PSNR values was demonstrated [172].
Application of iterative decoding in the context of network coding is proposed
for transmission of data. A network coded relay can be considered to be a cascade
of channel code at the transmitting nodes and network code at the relay [173]. This
enables implementation of turbo-like decoding scheme and can provide significant
improvement by performing iterative decoding compared to the existing schemes
[174, 175].
2.5.1 Problem Statement
This work aims to develop iterative decoding schemes for transmission of image and
data. Application of iterative decoding techniques to two different types of multiple
description coding (MDC) techniques for images have been looked into; namely, FEC
based n-channel MDC and MDSQ based two-channel MDC. Iterative decoding is
also applied for improvement in bit error rate (BER) performance in case of network
coded relay systems.
2.5.2 Objectives
From literature survey we find that in FEC based MDC techniques, hard decision
output of inner channel code is passed on to outer RS code and RS decoder does
not pass any information back to inner code. Recently, Chang et al. [80] proposed
an iterative decoding technique for FEC based MDC, in which hard decision is
exchanged between the constituent decoders. Since, hard decisions typically result
in loss of information, we propose to utilize recent development in SISO decoding of
RS codes [176] for developing soft iterative decoding scheme for FEC based MDC.
Recently Liu et al. [177] proposed LDPC-RS product codes and its decoding
algorithm in the context of cloud transmission. Cloud transmission [178] has been
proposed for achieving high degree of robustness against co-channel interference and
improving spectral efficiency. In the line of FEC based multiple description coding
literature, which uses RSCC with RS code to form a 2D product code structure, a
37
iterative decoding scheme for LDPC-RS code based MDC was developed.
Because of the enormous capacity increase multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO)
antenna systems offer, such systems gained a lot of interest in mobile communication
research [179]. MIMO systems help mitigate fading in wireless channel by provid-
ing space diversity. Space-time coded transmission over MIMO, introduced first by
Tarokh at el. [180], provide both space-time diversity and spectral efficiency. Dif-
ferential space-time block codes (DSTBC) has been shown to be a recursive code
and can be decoded using iterative techniques [181, 182]. Using iterative decoder
of [80] as outer decoder, a three stage iterative decoding technique is proposed for
differential space time coded FEC based multiple descriptions, in which DSTBC act
as innermost code.
A two-channel wavelet based MDC scheme was proposed by Song et al. in [64].
This scheme provides protection against packet loss and random bit errors, and has
potential for improvement in AWGN channel. Since, this scheme does not utilize soft
decision available at the output of AWGN channel, SISO arithmetic decoder [115]
is applied for decoding of multiple descriptions transmitted over AWGN and packet
loss channels.
In [173], Ben Slimane et al. proposed an hard decision iterative decoding tech-
nique for information transmitted by relays using network code in a MARC setup.
Based on ideas developed for RSCC-RS soft iterative decoder, we proposed a soft
decision decoder in the context of network coded relays in MARC setup. Later we
extended these ideas to the research in [162]. Menghwar et al. [161, 162] proposed
schemes which combines the benefits of space-time codes and network coding for co-
operative communication in MARC setup. We improve upon the research in [162] by
application of the concept of product code and iterative network-channel decoding.
In light of the literature survey carried out and the foregoing discussion, following
objectives are identified and addressed in this work.
To develop iterative decoding scheme for recursive systematic convolutional

code - Reed-Solomon code (RSCC-RS) based multiple description coding (MDC)
with Reed-Solomon (RS) soft decision decoder and evaluate its performance
over fading channel.
38
To develop iterative decoding scheme for low-density parity-check code - Reed-

Solomon code (LDPC-RS) based MDC with RS hard decision decoder and
evaluate its performance over fading channel.
To develop a three stage iterative decoding scheme for differential space-time

block code - recursive systematic convolutional code - Reed-Solomon code
(DSTBC-RSCC-RS) based MDC with RS hard decision decoder and evaluate
its performance over fading channel.
To develop iterative source-channel decoding scheme for multiple description

scalar quantizer (MDSQ) based two channel MDC and evaluate its perfor-
mance over noisy channel.
To develop network-channel iterative decoding scheme for multiple access relay

channel (MARC) and evaluate its performance over fading channel.
To develop iterative network-channel decoding scheme with cooperative space-

time transmission and evaluate its performance over fading channel.
2.6 Summary of Contributions

In this work, our main contribution is development of iterative decoding schemes for
receivers in wireless communication scenario and improve the performance compared
to existing schemes proposed in literature. Our contributions are organized into
four chapters in this dissertation. In this section a summary of our contributions is
presented.
2.6.1 Iterative decoding of FEC Based Multiple Descrip-

tions with Soft RS Decoder
Iterative decoding of FEC based MDC over wireless channel
In [170, 183, 184], an iterative decoding algorithm utilizing RS and RSCC was pro-
posed for FEC based MDC transmitted over wireless channels. Based on [185], RS
39
code and RSCC utilized in FEC based MDC is treated as compound code and de-
coded using iterative soft decision decoding. To obtain soft decision output, BCJR
algorithm [12] is applied for decoding RSCC (instead of Viterbi decoder as in [73,78])
and RS code is decoded by utilizing adaptive belief propagation algorithm [176] (in-
stead of hard decision Berlekamp-Massey algorithm). This allows soft information
available at the output of BCJR decoder for decoding RS coded multiple descrip-
tions and allows decoding capabilities beyond maximum separable distance (MDS)
code. Decoding is done iteratively by passing extrinsic information between both
the decoders till CRC are satisfied or maximum number of iterations are completed.
Simulation results show significant improvements in reconstructed image PSNR in
both AWGN and Rayleigh fading channels.
Iterative decoding of FEC based MDC transmitted over opportunistic

relay network
In [183], proposed soft iterative multiple description decoder is applied for improv-
ing the quality of image received through coded oppertunistic relay network. Multi-
terminal wireless networks like ad-hoc and sensor networks have emerged as a poten-
tial area for dissemination and collection of multimedia information. In such multi-
terminal wireless networks, cooperative communication can deliver spatial diversity
through the collaboration between users [186]. Specifically, we consider transmis-
sion over coded opportunistic amplify-and-forward (COAF) and coded opportunistic
decode-and-forward (CODF) network proposed in [187], which use RS-RSCC at the
transmitting node. Simulation result show improvement in received PSNR compared
to system which did not employ iterative decoding.
2.6.2 Iterative Decoding of FEC Based Multiple Descrip-

tions with Hard RS Decoder
Iterative decoding of LDPC-RS based multiple descriptions
Low-density parity check (LDPC)-RS product code has emerged as a promising

technique for error correction in cloud transmission of multimedia information be-
40
cause of its superior error correcting capabilities. In [172,188], an iterative decoding

scheme for LDPC-RS code based multiple descriptions was proposed. In this scheme,
image is transmitted using two-dimensional (2-D) product code based on RS code
and LDPC code. At the transmitter, progressively coded image is encoded with RS
code having varying parity levels. Multiple descriptions are formed by extracting
RS symbols, which are further encoded with LDPC code. At the receiver, LDPC
decoder passes hard decisions to RS decoder. RS decoder, in turn, returns back
information about the correctly decoded RS codewords. This helps in improving
the decoding performance of LDPC code at next iteration. Thus, with subsequent
iterations, PSNR of the received image improves. Simulation results show that the
proposed scheme outperforms similar existing schemes in literature.
Iterative decoding of differential space-time coded FEC based MDC
A three stage iterative decoding scheme was proposed for FEC based multiple de-
scriptions received through MIMO channel in [189]. The three decoding stages con-
sist of hard decision RS decoder, SISO MAP (BCJR) decoder for RSCC and SISO
decoder for differential space-time block code (DSTBC). In the proposed scheme,
SISO DSTBC decoder and MAP decoder exchange soft information in the form
of extrinsic information, whereas hard decision on the output of MAP decoder for
RSCC is passed on to hard decision RS decoder. The feedback provided by the
RS decoder acts as a priori information for the MAP decoder. With simulation
improvement in PSNR performance for the proposed scheme is demonstrated.
2.6.3 Iterative Soft Decision Source-Channel Decoding of

Multiple Description Coded Image
Accumulator aided iterative source-channel decoding of arithmetic codes
In [190], a low complexity, joint source-channel decoding scheme for arithmetic codes
is studied. We proposed a unity-rate accumulator based design for low complexity
Chase-like decoding of arithmetic codes. Chase-like decoding is a low complexity
algorithm, where a maximum a posteriori sequence estimation criterion is employed
41
for maximum likelihood decoding of variable length codes like arithmetic codes.
Earlier research proposed iterative decoding of SISO arithmetic codes with RSCC
and LDPC codes. We proposed application of unity rate accumulator as inner
encoder and decoder in the system, which improved the bit error performance of the
system by 1.25 dB, with same number of decoding iterations. Performance of the
proposed scheme was evaluated for image transmission application.
Iterative source-channel decoding of two-channel MDC
In [168], joint source-channel decoding of arithmetic codes was applied to the case
of two-channel scalar quantizer based MDC. In this scheme, multiple descriptions
of wavelet transformed image are generated and coded using SPIHT compression
algorithm for achieving robust transmission over packet-loss channel. Two differ-
ent schemes are considered in which we apply SISO Chase-type arithmetic decoder
for noise robust reception of the multiple descriptions over additive white Gaussian
channel (AWGN) in contrast to earlier works which consider reception over binary
symmetric channels. We utilize built-in arithmetic coder of SPIHT algorithm for
achieving noise robust transmission of multiple descriptions without increasing en-
coder complexity and utilize low complexity SISO decoding of arithmetic codes.
Finally, performance of these schemes were evaluated and compared to existing re-
search literature.
Iterative source-channel decoding of two-channel MDC with EREC-ST
In this research [169], our contribution lies in improving the scheme of Song et
al. [64] by adapting Chase-type SISO arithmetic decoder for decoding of multiple
descriptions transmitted over additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and packet
loss channels. Scheme proposed in [64] consists of SPIHT coding of wavelet trees
along spatial orientation for both descriptions. In order to maintain high compres-
sion efficiency and robust synchronization, EREC [95] is applied to reorganize these
variable length bitstreams into fixed length slots before transmission.
In the proposed scheme, SPIHT coded bitstreams are arithmetic coded to further
increase compression efficiency and use of soft channel information at the receiver
42
improves the noise robustness of the arithmetic decoder. Combining EREC with
iterative source-channel decoding of arithmetic code is not quite straightforward as
EREC requires instantaneous hard decision decoding of the source symbols. Our
innovation lies in applying EREC assisted by state and tail bits (ERECST) [191] with
arithmetic coded SPIHT trees of variable lengths for SISO decoding of arithmetic
codes. This enables iterative source-channel decoding of EREC coded fixed length
slots at the receiver and improve PSNR gain significantly.
2.6.4 Iterative Decoding of Network-Channel Codes
Iterative network-channel decoding in MARC
In the research [174], joint network-channel coding for MARC is considered when
the source node employs RS code as error correcting code and punctured RSCC
is used as network code. Encoding user information with RS code, in contrast to
simply encoding with linear block code [173], is more relevant because of widespread
prevalence of RS code in many existing standards. Our main contribution is applying
the concept of iterative soft decoder for concatenated codes [185] in the context of
network-channel decoding in MARC setup. The proposed algorithm enables network
code and channel decoders to exchange soft information iteratively and to achieve
an improved performance compared to a hard decision iterative decoder.
Iterative network-channel decoding with cooperative space-time trans-

mission
In [175], bit error rate performance is enhanced for a distributed space-time coded
system aided by a relay which performs network coding. Similar to earlier scheme,
the proposed scheme uses punctured RSCC as network code at the relay and RS
code as channel code. In addition both the user nodes cooperate using distributed
space-time code. Our main innovation is iterative network-channel decoding at the
receiver using the principles derived from soft decoding of concatenated RS convolu-
tional codes. The proposed algorithm enables network code and channel decoders to
exchange soft information iteratively and may yield a capacity approaching perfor-
43
mance. This scheme is an improvement over an existing scheme in literature [162].

Simulations performed for fading channel demonstrate the improvement in BER
performance compared to existing scheme.
2.7 Conclusion
In this chapter, the background information related to iterative decoding for codes
received over wireless channel has been presented. An exhaustive literature survey
of the state of art in modern channel codes employing iterative decoding, FEC based
MDC, quantizer based MDC, cooperative diversity in wireless networks and network-
channel coding has been given. Problem statement, objective and motivation behind
the problem statement was also stated in this chapter. In the final section, our
contribution to the research literature has been presented.
******
Chapter 3
Iterative Decoding of FEC Based

Multiple Descriptions with Soft
RS Decoder
Forward error correction (FEC) based multiple description coding (MDC) is a

method which enables generation of an arbitrary number of descriptions from a
progressive image bitstream. These descriptions are formed using erasure protec-
tion properties of Reed-Solomon (RS) codes and symbols RS codeword are spread
across multiple descriptions or packets. Each description is then encoded using
concatenation of cyclic redundancy check (CRC) and convolutional code.
In this chapter, a soft iterative decoding scheme for FEC based MDC is presented.
The proposed scheme is evaluated for transmission over wireless fading channel and
relay network employing opportunistic cooperative communication. The simula-
tions results over wireless channel show significant improvement over existing iter-
ative decoding schemes. The results over coded opportunistic amplify-and-forward
(COAF) and coded opportunistic decode-and-forward (CODF) network also show
improvement in received PSNR compared to system which does not employ iterative
decoding.
44
45
3.1 Introduction
In the recent years, mobile wireless devices have become a dominant means of com-
munication for multimedia. Real time multimedia streaming applications require
timely delivery of information and are transmitted on the packet network on a
best effort basis using protocols like UDP or RTP, rather than a connection ori-
ented protocol like TCP/IP. To maintain necessary quality of service the receiver
should be able to tolerate packet loss using methods like multiple description cod-
ing. Each packet should also be protected using channel codes for protection against
noise. Many multimedia coders employ a progressive mode of transmission, where,
as more and more bits are received, the source can be reconstructed with better qual-
ity. Earlier works considered transmission of progressively coded image stream over
wireless channel using rate-compatible punctured convolutional codes, where more
important bits are transmitted with lower rate (stronger error correction) codes.
Multiple description coding has come up as an attractive framework for robust
transmission of image and video over packet erasure channels [56]. Recently FEC
based multiple description coding has received attention in literature because of its
ability to produce arbitrary number of balanced or equally important descriptions
from a single progressive bitstream. Initially, FEC based multiple description coding
was envisioned for packet loss channels and consisted of RS codes (but providing
unequal error protection) arranged in 2-D matrix form. Loss of any packet was
recoverable because of erasure correction property of RS codes. This scheme also
provided graceful degradation of received image quality in case of packet losses.
Though this arrangement provided protection against packet losses, it was further
adapted by Sachs et al. [73] for wireless channels by encoding each description with
convolutional code. Thus, in such an encoding scheme, RS code is used to mitigate
packet erasures, whereas convolutional code provides protection against bit errors
(caused by noise and fading in wireless channel). In the scheme of [73] and sub-
sequent research, only hard decision of channel decoder (Viterbi decoder in case of
convolutional code) is applied to FEC decoder (RS code). Due to hard decision
performed at this stage, some information is lost which could have helped in better
decoding performance. Improvement in performance can be obtained if both the
46
codes are considered a single system and could exchange soft a priori information.
In this chapter, an iterative soft decision decoding algorithm for FEC based
multiple description code is proposed for transmission of progressively coded image
over wireless channels. In the proposed scheme, inner channel decoder accepts soft
channel reliability information and provides soft extrinsic information to the outer
decoder (RS decoder). This allows iterative soft decoding of RS codes, which in
turn allows decoding capabilities beyond maximum distance separable (MDS) code.
Iterative soft decoding of RS code has been historically challenging and was recently
made possible by the works of Jiang and Narayanan [176] and others [192, 193]. In
our actual algorithm, to obtain soft decision output, BCJR algorithm (for decoding
convolutional code) is applied on the channel reliability values, instead of Viterbi
decoder as done in most of the research in literature. This soft decision is applied
to SISO RS decoder to output soft extrinsic information. Thus decoding is done
iteratively by passing extrinsic information between both the decoders till CRC
are satisfied or maximum number of iterations are completed. The algorithm is
first evaluated over AWGN and Rayleigh flat fading point-to-point link channel.
Simulation is also performed for evaluating the performance over opportunistic relay
network. For relay network, two coded opportunistic cooperative schemes proposed
in [187] are considered, the coded opportunistic amplify-and-forward (COAF) and
coded opportunistic decode-and-forward (CODF).
Rest of the chapter is organized as follows. In Section 3.2, basic principles of FEC
based MDC is introduced. In Section 3.3, the proposed soft iterative FEC based
MDC decoder is explained. Iterative decoding of FEC based MDC transmitted over
oppertunistic relay network is described in Section 3.4. Simulation results are given
in Section 3.5 and finally, Section 3.6 is conclusion.
3.2 FEC Based Multiple Description Coding

Basic principles of FEC based multiple description coding proposed in literature is
discussed next. An (n, k) MDS code (e.g. Reed Solomon code) encodes k information
symbols into codeword of length n such that reception of any of k symbols out of n
47
symbols enables k information symbols to be recovered. A progressive multimedia

bitstream is obtained from typical scalable source coders like SPIHT or JPEG 2000
for images, and H.264/AVC standard coder for video. Unequal error protection FEC
is applied to different parts of progressive stream to obtain n-channel FEC based
multiple descriptions. As explained in Section 2.2.2 and shown again in the Figure
3.1, first source symbol (marked as 1) is encoded with (n, 1) RS code (column 1),
source symbols 2 and 3 are encoded with (n, 2) RS code (column 2). Subsequent
source symbols are encoded in similar way with decreasing level of protection using
(n, ki ) RS codes, where k1 k2 ki kp , where p is the number of RS
codewords. That is, the source symbols are encoded with unequal protection with
symbols in the beginning of the stream given more error protection compared to the
subsequent symbols in the stream. Any error or erasures in a column (of RS code)
can be corrected if k symbols are received correctly.
Next the descriptions or packets are formed by taking symbols row by row from
the RS codes as shown in the Figure 3.1. In this process, the progressive data is con-
verted into multiple descriptions in which contiguous information is spread across
multiple packets. Similarly, if any j out of n descriptions are received without any
error, those codewords with source symbols less than or equal to j can be decoded.
Finally, packets or descriptions thus formed are appended with CRC and channel
coded with recursive systematic convolutional code (RSCC) before transmitting over
wireless channel to the destination directly or through a relay network. A conven-
tional receiver decodes the RSCC and checks the integrity of the packet using CRC.
In case a packet fails CRC, it is dropped and the packet is said to suffer an erasure.
Image is reconstructed from the remaining packets utilizing the erasure correction
property of Reed-Solomon code discussed earlier. There is no reverse flow of in-
formation from RS decoder to Viterbi decoder in a conventional FEC based MDC
decoders.
48
Description 1 1 2 4 6 Info Info CRC RSCC

Description 2 Parity 3 5 7 Info Info CRC RSCC
Description 3 Parity Parity Parity 8 Info Info CRC RSCC
Parity Parity Parity Parity Info Info CRC RSCC
Description n Parity Parity Parity Parity Parity Parity CRC RSCC

RS codewords
Figure 3.1: Two dimensional (2-D) arrangement of RS and RSCC codewords in

FEC based MDC.
3.3 Iterative Decoding of FEC Based MDC with

Soft RS Decoder
3.3.1 System Model
In the earlier section, a summary of FEC based MDC was given. The system for
transmission of progressively coded image using FEC based MDC and the proposed
iterative decoding algorithm is described next. Output of source encoder, con-
sisting of progressive bitstream, are grouped into symbols belonging to GF(q) and
encoded with (n, ki ) RS code, where, i = 1, ..., p. Multiple descriptions are formed
as described in earlier section. As shown in the Figure 3.2, FEC based multiple
description packets are communicated over packet switched network (e.g. internet)
to a wireless access point (WAP) for last hop delivery to an end user. In the packet
network some of the description may be dropped (e.g. due to congestion). Packets
received at the WAP are broadcast after being appended with CRC to detect errors
and encoded with channel code like RSCC or turbo code.
At the receiver log-domain BCJR algorithm is applied to the received noisy de-
scriptions (row by row, as in the Figure 3.1). BCJR decoder [12] is a soft-input
soft-output algorithm for decoding RSCC, in contrast to Viterbi decoder which is
typically outputs hard decision. The extrinsic information out of BCJR decoder is
extracted column by column and applied to SISO RS decoder. The SISO RS de-
coder applied in this work is adaptive belief propagation (ABP) algorithm proposed
49
Reed-Solomon Packet Append CRC &

Source coder (column formation Packet Convolutional
Encoder by column) (row by row) Network Encoder
BCJR Decoder
Berlekamp- (row by row)
Source Massey Check CRC Wireless
Decoder RS decoder (row by row) Channel
SISO RS decoder
(column by column)
ABP Algorithm
Figure 3.2: System model showing encoding, transmission and decoding of FEC
based MDC.
in [176]. Extrinsic soft decisions of RS decoder is again applied back to BCJR de-
coder. This iterative decoding algorithm is described in detail next section. After
finite number of iterations, CRC of each description is used to identify the correct
descriptions. Incorrect or missing descriptions are declared as erased. Attempt is
made to recover the erased symbols by using conventional RS hard decision decoders,
like Berlekamo Massey (BM) algorithm [194]. Image is then reconstructed from the
correctly decoded descriptions as in a conventional FEC based MDC decoder.
3.3.2 Iterative Decoding of Multiple Descriptions
An essential component of the proposed algorithm is iterative soft decision decoder

for outer RS codes. Applying iterative decoding techniques to RS codes has been a
challenge in coding theory. The main difficulty is the dense nature of parity check
matrix. ABP algorithm [176] circumvents this problem by adapting parity check
matrix of RS code in such a way that least reliable bits corresponds to a sparse
submatrix (of parity check matrix) and the sum-product algorithm (SPA) is then
applied to the adapted parity check matrix.
Before the proposed algorithm is presented, we describe how to obtain the binary
parity check matrix for RS code. Let be a primitive element in GF(q), q = n + 1.
50
Parity check matrix for a valid RS code is [194]

1 ... n1

1 2 . . . 2(n1)

Hq = .. .. .. ..
(3.3.1)
.

. . .

1 nk . . . (nk)(n1)
The binary image of parity check matrix Hq be denoted as H and is of dimension

(n0 , k 0 ), where, n0 = mn, k 0 = mk, and m = log2 (q) is the number of bits in a
symbol. Let p(x) = xm + am1 xm1 + ... + a1 x + a0 be a primitive polynomial with
coefficients ai GF (2). Let C(p) be its m m binary companion matrix [195] as
follows.
0 0 ... 0 a0

1 0 ... 0 a1

C(p) = 0 (3.3.2)

1 ... 0 a2
.. .. . . .. ..

. . . . .

0 0 . . . 1 am1
Binary parity check matrix H is obtained by replacing every element i in Hq of
(3.3.1) with corresponding mm matrix C i . The binary image bj = [cj,0 , cj,1 , ..., cj,m1 ]
of a codeword is such that HbT = 0, is obtained by representing each element
cj GF (2m ) with cj = cj,0 + cj,1 + ... + cj,i i + ... + cj,m1 m1 , where cj,i GF (2).
Let ci,j GF (2m ), i = 1, ..., n and j = 1, ..., p be a symbol in ith row and jth
column in 2D code matrix in the Figure 3.1. The binary representation of a RS code
in jth column [c1,j , c2,j , ..., cn,j ]T is given as
[c1,j,0 , c1,j,1 , ..., c1,j,m1 , c2,j,0 , ..., ci,j,l , ..., cn,j,m1 ]T (3.3.3)
For simplicity of notation, let the bit vector in (3.3.3) be denoted as
Cjcol = [cj (1), cj (2), ..., cj (nm)]T . (3.3.4)
On the other hand, a description is an array of symbols along the row. Binary
representation of ith description (or row) [ci,1 , ci,2 , ..., ci,p ] is
[ci,1,0 , ci,1,1 , ..., ci,1,m1 , ci,2,0 , ..., ci,j,l , ..., ci,p,m1 ]T (3.3.5)
51
ABP Algorithm
p e
LLR ordered Lch BCJR L1 L1 Le2 Berlekamp-
RS Parity-check SPA (one
into n rows
yi(t) (descriptions)
decoder
(row by row) + -
+a matrix adaptation iteration)
Massey
RS decoder
L2
a Column by column
L1
Figure 3.3: Block diagram of iterative soft decoder of FEC based multiple description
code.
The bits in ith description in (3.3.5) be denoted as
Cirow = [ri (1), ri (2), ..., ri (pm)], (3.3.6)
and on being encoded with rate k (1) /n(1) RSCC becomes
Xi = [xi (1), xi (2), ..., xi (pmn(1) /k (1) )]. (3.3.7)
CRC will be used for detecting errors in description and is not included above to
avoid cluttering the calculations. If we assume binary phase shift keying (BPSK)
modulation, the baseband equivalent of transmitted signal with unit symbol energy
is x0i (t) = (1 2xi (t)). Signal received at the destination is
yi (t) = t x0i (t) + w(t) (3.3.8)
where, t is fading coefficient at time t. t is Rayleigh distributed with E[(t )2 ] = 1

and w is zero mean additive white Gaussian noise with variance 2 . Reliability of
each received bit given in terms of channel log-liklihood ratios (LLR) is
P [xi (t) = 0|y(t)]
Lch (xi (t)) = log (3.3.9)
P [xi (t) = 1|y(t)]
for t = 1, ..., pmn(1) /k (1) , i = 1, ..., n. The block diagram of the proposed iterative
soft decoder for FEC based multiple descriptions is shown in the Figure 3.3. It
consists of an inner MAP decoder for RSCC, and outer SISO decoder for RS codes.
The arrangement of two different codes along row and column makes the use of
interleaver redundant and is not required in the proposed scheme. The combined
iterative decoder forms a structure similar to turbo codes.
The first stage of iterative decoder consists of a MAP decoder, called BCJR
algorithm. For description i, decoder input is Lch (xi (t)), t = 1, ..., pmn(1) /k (1) and
52
a priori LLR La1 (ri (t)), t = 1, ..., pm. BCJR algorithm calculates the a posterior
LLR values Lp1 (ri (t)). Extrinsic information to be passed on to a subsequent stage
is calculated as Le1 = Lp1 La1 for all descriptions i = 1, ..., n.
The next stage consists of an iteration of ABP algorithm for calculation of ex-
trinsic information Le2 . This stage proceeds in two parts, updating the parity check
matrix and calculation of extrinsic information. The extrinsic information of pre-
vious stage Le1 after interleaving becomes a priori information La2 and is used for
initializing each iteration in this stage. The interleaving operation reorders LLR of
bits of descriptions (rows) into arrangement given by (3.3.3). We have a vector of
LLRs of jth RS code at lth iteration as
La2 (Cjcol ) = [La2 (cj (1)), La2 (cj (2)), ..., La2 (cj (nm))]T . (3.3.10)
To update the parity check matrix H, the magnitude of a priori LLR |La2 | is sorted
in ascending order of magnitude and sorting index are stored as = [t1 , t2 , ..., tnm ].
Columns of the matrix H are then reordered according to the permutation to ob-
tain (H). Gaussian elimination then reduces the first independent n0 k 0 columns
to identity submatrix. Let this matrix be denoted as H 0 . Finally, inverse permuta-
tion is performed on the columns of H 0 as follows
H 00 = 1 (H 0 ) (3.3.11)
Calculation of extrinsic information is performed using sum-product algorithm based

on adapted parity-check matrix H 00 . For bit t of RS codeword j, the extrinsic LLR
is obtained as
Pn0 k0
Le2 (cj (t)) = 00 2 tanh1
Qs=1,H st =1 (3.3.12)
n0 a
00 =1
r=1,r6=t,Hsr tanh{L (c
2 j (r))/2}
This extrinsic information is reordered into the form as in (3.3.5) to get a priori LLR
La1 for the MAP decoder. After Niter number of SISO iterations between RSCC and
RS code, the a posteriori LLR of each RS bit is computed as
Lp2 (cj (t)) = La2 (cj (t)) + Le2 (cj (t)) (3.3.13)
where, 0 < 1 is a damping coefficient and is selected empirically. Its value

in this chapter is 0.3. The iterations are run a predetermined number of times or
53
until parity checks are satisfied. It may happen that some of the RS codewords
will satisfy parity check conditions earlier than others; the extrinsic LLR of those
codewords are not calculated anymore and corresponding a posteriori LLR are saved.
To summarize the proposed algorithm for iterative decoding of FEC based multiple
descriptions can be stated as follows.
Algorithm 3.1
Definition:
yi (t): Received signal value at time slot t of i-th description.
t : Channel fading coefficient at time instant t.
2 : Noise variance.
Niter : Maximum number of decoding iterations.
: Damping coefficient.
1. Initilization
(a) Set , Niter , and LLR of the coded bits from channel observations as
Lch (xi (t)) = 2yi (t)t / 2 .
(b) Create a binary array of bits f lag of length p and initialize it with zeros.
(c) Initialize the array of binary parity check matrices, Hkn , k = 1, ..., n 1,
for (n, k) RS code.
2. Recorder the received bits into descriptions or as in (3.3.5). If some of the

descriptions had been lost in packet network, the channel LLR of those pack-
ets is taken to be zero. For example, if S is the set of lost packets, then
Lch (xiS (t)) = 0.
3. For each description i = 1, 2, ..., n, apply BCJR algorithm to calculate a pos-

teriori LLR Lp1 (ri ) of bits in (3.3.6) and corresponding extrinsic LLR Le1 (ri ).
4. Reorder the matrix containing extrinsic LLR out of step 3, where rows of the
form in (3.3.5) are transformed to a matrix containing columns of form (3.3.3).
(Each column now consists all the of bits of an RS codeword.)
5. For each RS codeword j = 1, 2, ..., p and if f lag(j) 6= 1

54
(a) Sort the magnitude of LLR |La2 (Cjcol )| in ascending order and save the
ordering indices as .
(b) Select the appropriate binary parity check matrix for (n, ki ) RS code as
H = Hkn .
(c) Arrange the columns of H according to the order and systematize the
first n0 k 0 columns using Gaussian elimination. Rearrange the columns
back to their original positions to get the modified parity check matrix
H 00 according to (3.3.11).
(d) Apply one iteration of sum-product algorithm given in (3.3.12) to calcu-

late extrinsic LLR Le2 (cj (t)).
(e) Calculate bit level reliabilities Lp2 (cj (t)) according to (3.3.13).
(f) Obtain hard decisions as cj (t) = [1 sign(Lp2 (cj (t)))]/2.
(g) If Hcj = 0, set the flag as f lag(j) = 1.
6. Reorder extrinsic LLR Le2 into matrix La1 consisting of rows of the form (3.3.5).
Each row La1 (ri (t)) contains a priori LLR for description i.
7. If for all j, f lag(j) = 1 or if maximum number of iterations is reached, termi-

nate any further iterations; otherwise go to step 3.
8. Decode the RS codes from hard decisions using BM algorithm and extract the
information symbols.
3.3.3 Complexity Analysis
In this section, complexity of the proposed iterative decoding algorithm is analyzed.

Since, encoding operation at the transmitter is same for both proposed and con-
ventional schemes, we concentrate only on the decoding complexity. The following
analysis are based on calculations in [185]. As discussed in earlier sections, the it-
erative decoder consists of two constituent decoders BCJR and ABP algorithm.
An iteration of BCJR or MAP decoding algorithm for RSCC requires O(12mp)
floating point operations, where is the number of states of the RSCC. SISO decod-
ing of RS code, consists of three stages, which includes Gaussian elimination, belief
55
propagation or sum-product algorithm and RS hard decision decoding. Gaussian

elimination process requires O(mn(mn mk)2 ) binary operations. If is the aver-
age row weight of adapted parity check matrix H 00 , each iteration of sum-product
algorithm requires O((n k)m2 ) floating point operations. Finally, performing RS
hard decision decoding using BM algorithm requires O(n2 ) finite field arithmetic
operations.
We now analyze the approximate decoding complexity of the proposed algorithm
and compare it with that of reference decoder. For each iteration of ABP algorithm,
Gaussian elimination and belief propagation algorithm is run for maximum of Niter
number of times and after completion of iterations, hard decision BM algorithm
is applied. The iterations may terminate early for higher SNR values. Therefore,
together with BCJR algorithm, the proposed iterative decoder requires at most
O(Niter (12pmn + (n k)pm2 )) (3.3.14)
floating point operations. Number of binary operations required is
O(Niter pmn(mn mk)2 ) (3.3.15)
Since, hard decision BM algorithm is applied after completion of Niter number of

sum-product algorithm iterations, there is at most O(pn2 ) finite field arithmetic
operations.
If similar decoder is implemented with classical Viterbi algorithm for decoding
RSCC, it will require O(2pm) floating point operations. For Berlekamp-Massey
algorithm, number of finite field arithmetic operations required will be O(n2 ). It
is obvious that complexity of the proposed algorithm is far greater than tandem
Viterbi-BM decoding algorithm. This increased complexity is justified considering
the significant improvement in bit error rate, and hence improvement in PSNR.
3.4 Iterative Decoding of Multiple Descriptions

over Opportunistic Relay Network
Encoding stage for FEC based multiple descriptions was described in earlier sections.
In this section, proposed scheme is extended to opportunistic relay network in [187]
56
r=1 r=1
r=2 r=2
S D S D
r=b
r=R r=R
(a) Broadcasting phase (b) Relaying phase
Figure 3.4: Two phases of opportunistic cooperative communication using relays.
which uses product code consisting of RS and RSCC. Channel model for both the
relay aided transmission schemes are described next. The relay network consists of
source (S), which transmits the FEC coded multiple descriptions, and destination
(D), along with a set of R relay candidates Sr , r = 1, , R. In opportunistic
cooperation network, one of the relay nodes will be selected for retransmission of
message transmitted by S. The channel model focuses on the case of slow fading
to isolate the benefit of spatial diversity obtained by relaying. All the transmissions
are assumed to be in orthogonal channels, i.e. different time slots or frequencies.
Both the coded opportunistic transmission schemes can be described by a two phase
transmission as indicated in the Figure 3.4. In the broadcast phase, source S will
broadcast message to destination D and all the relays as:

yD (t) = 1 SD xS (t) + nD (t), t = 1, 2, ..., l (3.4.16)

yr (t) = 1 Sr xS (t) + nr (t), r Sr , t = 1, 2, ..., l (3.4.17)
where, yD (t) and yr (t) are signal received at D and a relay r Sr , respectively, in the
first phase of transmission. The coded and modulated symbols are indicated as xS ,
and SD , Sr are fading coefficient of the channel from S to D and r, respectively.
In the relaying phase, one of the relay b Sr is selected as the best relay, the
retransmitted signal received at D is

yD (t) = 2 bD xb (t) + nD (t), t = l + 1, l + 2, ..., 2l (3.4.18)
where, 1 is the transmission energy per symbol at S and 2 is the transmission

energy per symbol at the selected relay, such that total energy = 1 + 1 is a
constant.
57
For COAF, best relay is selected according to max-min criteria [196],
b = arg max{min(|Sr |2 , |rD |2 )} (3.4.19)

rSr
The relayed signal xb (t) is amplified and delayed version of yb .
xb (t) = yb (t l), (3.4.20)
where is the amplification factor. The selected relay simply amplifies the received
p
signal by a factor = 2 /(|Sr |2 1 + N0 ) and retransmits towards the destination.
In CODF, all the relays will try decoding the message received from S. Only
those relays that can decode the received message correctly will be selected for
re-transmission. If the transmission rate of the system is R bits/s/Hz, a correct
decoding at the relay r requires:
log2 (1 + |Sr |2 SN R) > R. (3.4.21)
The relays which satisfy the above inequality form a set Sr as
Sr = {r| log2 (1 + |Sr |2 SN R) > R}. (3.4.22)
In CODF, best relay is selected using max criteria [187],
b = arg max {|rD |2 }. (3.4.23)

rSr
Selected relay in CODF scheme decodes the RSCC of the packets and if there is not
any error, encodes it again with RSCC. Re-encoded packets are then relayed to the
destination. At the destination iterative decoding is performed in similar manner
described in Section 3.3.2. In [187], it was shown that max criteria can enable the
CODF scheme to fully exploit the diversity gain. Sr can be an empty set when
none of the relays can decode the received message correctly. In such a scenario, S
will re-transmit its signal again in the relaying phase. Consequently, in the relaying
phase, D receives
yD (t) = SD xS (t l) + nD (t), t = l + 1, l + 2, ..., 2l (3.4.24)
Statistically, fading coefficients SD and Sr are modeled as zero-mean, mutually

independent complex jointly Gaussian random variables with variances 2 . We
model additive noises nD and nr as zero-mean, mutually independent white complex
jointly Gaussian sequences with variance N0 /2.
58
3.5 Performance of Iterative Decoder for FEC Based

MDC with Soft RS Decoder
Based on the discussion in previous sections, peak-signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) per-
formance of the iterative FEC based multiple description decoding technique for
progressive image transmission is evaluated in wireless point-to-point link channel
and relay channel. The scheme was evaluated for transmission of 8-bits-per-pixel
(bpp) 512 512 test images, which is SPIHT coded at a rate of 0.2 bpp. The en-
coder in multiple description coding scheme consists of (n, ki ) RS code, where in our
particular simulation setup n is also the number of descriptions and is taken to be
31. The number of information symbols ki , i = 1, ..., p in RS code is optimized using
hill climbing approach proposed by Mohr et al. [75]. Similar to systems proposed
in [73], [78], [80], we use RSCC as channel code and each individual description is
coded with (5, 7)8 RSCC of rate 1/2. For evaluating the performance of the proposed
iterative decoder, the average PSNR of the received image is plotted as function of
channel SNR. Simulations are performed over wireless channels, and we assume that
none of the descriptions are lost in packet network. It is to be noted that the SNR
is calculated per bit of RS coded multiple description information.
The improvement in decoder with increasing number of iterations for Lena image
is shown in the Figure 3.5 and the Figure 3.6. Maximum number of decoding
iterations for both schemes is 10, after which no significant improvement is observed
in PSNR. For each simulation point, 500 trials have been performed in order to
average statistical variations. Simulation results for AWGN channel is given in the
Figure 3.5. With 10 iterations, the proposed system achieves highest PSNR value
of 30.6 dB for channel SNR of 1.5 dB, which is 4 dB higher compared to PSNR
achieved by single iteration of the proposed algorithm. Maximum iteration gain in
PSNR of 8.5 dB is observed at channel SNR of 0.5 dB, where with 10 iterations
PSNR improves from 18.7 dB to 27.2 dB. Similarly, in the Figure 3.6 we show
improvement in PSNR performance with increasing number of decoding iterations
for transmission over Rayleigh flat fading channel. Maximum PSNR value of 30.65
dB is obtained at SNR of 3.5 dB. At channel SNR of 2 dB, maximum iteration gain
59
of 11 dB is obtained.
In the next set of simulations, performance is compared to a baseline scheme
consisting of similar encoder and decoder, but with RSCC and RS code functioning
in tandem (indicated as tandem scheme), i.e. without any SISO iterative decoding.
In the tandem scheme, the RSCC is decoded using soft input Viterbi algorithm;
whereas, RS code is decoded using conventional hard-decision BM algorithm. The
proposed algorithm (indiacted as SISO CC-RS)is also compared to a FEC based
multiple description system proposed by Chang et al. [80] (indicated as reference
scheme), which utilizes iterative RS-RSCC decoder. The iterative decoder in ref-
erence scheme exchanges hard decisions between component decoders for obtaining
improved PSNR performance. For the purpose of fair comparison, the iterative
decoder of [80] is implemented under similar encoders and channel to that of the
proposed scheme. For all the subsequent simulations, to obtain improved results and
to maintain reasonable decoding complexity, we shall perform 5 decoding iterations
of the proposed algorithm.
In the Figure 3.7, performance of the proposed scheme is compared to tandem
scheme and reference schemes when descriptions are passed through AWGN channel.
As seen in the figure, the proposed SISO scheme achieves maximum PSNR value
at channel SNR of 2 dB, whereas, the tandem scheme reaches maximum PSNR at
channel SNR of 3 dB. Thus, proposed SISO CC-RS scheme provides a gain of 1 dB
compared to tandem scheme. SISO CC-RS scheme also provides significant gain in
decoded image PSNR compared to reference scheme, with maximum iteration gain
of 12 dB at SNR of 0.5 dB. Although the PSNR performance is comparable at SNR
greater than 1.5 dB, the proposed scheme greatly outperforms the reference scheme
for channel SNR values less than 1.5 dB. In Table 3.1, performance comparison of
the proposed scheme with tandem scheme is shown for other test images.
Next the comparison is performed for fading channels. It is assumed that channel
state information is available at the receiver. Figure 3.8 shows the performance over
Rayleigh flat fading channel. The channel is fast fading, i.e. fading coefficients are
varying with every symbol period. The results show that the proposed algorithm
provides significantly improved performance compared to the tandem scheme for
60
32
1 iter
30 2 iter
3 iter
4 iter
28
5 iter
10 iter
26
Average PSNR
24
22
20
18
16
14
-1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2
SNR (dB)
Figure 3.5: Average PSNR versus channel SNR for the case of transmission of Lena
image coded at rate 0.2 over AWGN channel. Improvement of PSNR at different
iterations of the proposed scheme is shown.
32
1 iter
30 2 iter
3 iter
4 iter
28
5 iter
Average PSNR (dB)
10 iter
26
24
22
20
18
16
14
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
SNR (dB)
Figure 3.6: Average PSNR versus channel SNR at different iterations for the case
of transmission of Lena image coded at rate 0.2 over Rayleigh flat fading channel.
61
32
30
28
26
Average PSNR (dB) 24
22
20
18
16
SISO CC-RS
14 Tandem CC-RS
Ref. scheme
12
-1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
SNR (dB)
Figure 3.7: Average PSNR versus channel SNR for the case of transmission of Lena
image coded at rate 0.2 over AWGN channel. Performance of the proposed scheme
is compared to two other schemes.
channel SNR < 5 dB. The improvement is more evident for lower values of channel
SNR. The results are mixed when proposed scheme is compared to reference scheme.
For the case of fast fading channel, PSNR performance of the proposed algorithm is
better for lower range of SNR values (< 2.5 dB). It can also be observed that PSNR
degradation in the proposed scheme is more graceful compared to the reference
scheme where there is an abrupt drop in PSNR at channel SNR < 3 dB. In Table
3.2, PSNR performance is compared with tandem scheme for some other test images.
Figure 3.9 depicts the PSNR performance comparison in quasi-static Rayleigh
fading channel. By quasi-static we mean the channel fading coefficient is constant for
at least the duration of transmission of a packet or RSCC. In this channel, the pro-
posed scheme outperforms both the reference scheme and baseline tandem decoding
scheme, for all values of channel SNR. The proposed soft-iterative decoding scheme
achieves maximum value of PSNR at channel SNR of 6 dB. The SNR requirement
to achieve maximum PSNR is 4 dB less compared to both the other schemes. On
the other hand, the maximum gain in PSNR compared to reference scheme is about
62
32
30
28
26
Average PSNR (dB)
24
22
20
18
16
SISO CC-RS
14 Tandem CC-RS
Ref. scheme
12
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
SNR (dB)
Figure 3.8: Comparison of PSNR performance of the proposed decoder with refer-
ence decoders for the case of transmission of FEC based MDC over Rayleigh fast
fading channel.
30
28
Average PSNR (dB)
26
24
22
20
SISO CC-RS
18 Tandem CC-RS
Ref. scheme
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
SNR (dB)
Figure 3.9: Comparison of PSNR performance of the proposed decoder with refer-
ence decoders over quasi-static fading channel.
63
Table 3.1: Performance advantage of proposed scheme in AWGN channel.

Reconstructed image PSNR (dB)
Image SNR 1.5 dB 2.0 dB 2.5 dB 3.0 dB 3.5 dB
Iterative 29.80 30.65 30.65 30.65 30.65

Lena
Tandem 20.55 26.16 29.72 30.65 30.65
Iterative 27.34 27.82 27.96 28.04 28.04

Goldhill
Tandem 22.59 24.69 27.00 27.95 28.04
Iterative 22.69 23.69 23.80 23.80 23.80

Peppers
Tandem 11.64 18.81 23.39 23.80 23.80
10 dB, which is obtained at channel SNR of 4 dB.
Table 3.2: Performance advantage of proposed scheme in Rayleigh flat fading channel
Reconstructed image PSNR (dB)
Image SNR 3.0 dB 3.5 dB 4.0 dB 4.5 dB 5.0 dB
Iterative 28.50 30.65 30.65 30.65 30.65

Lena
Tandem 16.88 23.95 29.21 30.09 30.59
Iterative 26.59 27.41 27.56 27.95 28.04

Goldhill
Tandem 20.90 23.08 24.62 26.36 27.68
Iterative 23.15 23.40 23.76 23.80 23.80

Peppers
Tandem 10.01 13.18 19.36 22.68 23.77
Next, performance of the proposed decoding scheme for FEC based MDC trans-
mitted over COAF and CODF relay channels is evaluated. In the Figure 3.10 and the
Figure 3.11, proposed iterative scheme is compared to baseline tandem RS-RSCC
system proposed in [187]. The baseline scheme is adapted for the case of transmis-
sion of FEC based multiple descriptions image information. The simulations are
performed for the scenario where transmission is aided by 1 to 4 relays. It is also
assumed that total energy of transmission per symbol is = 1 and 1 = 2 = 1/2.
It is also assumed that all the source-relay and relay-destination links exhibit sta-
tistically similar qualities. Simulation results show that by increasing the number
of relay candidates, significant performance gain is achieved. Figure 3.10 shows the
64
performance of the proposed and baseline scheme for COAF relay channel. It can
be seen that with the application of iterative decoding, there is marked improve-
ment in PSNR compared to baseline COAF scheme. When aided by a single relay
(R = 1), the proposed scheme provides a maximum PSNR gain of 9 dB at channel
SNR of 3 dB. Whereas, for the case of four relays, the maximum PSNR gain is 7 dB
at SNR of 2 dB, indicating reduction in gain obtained by iterative decoding. It is
because diversity gain provided by increased number of relays reduce the possibility
for further iterative decoding gain.
Figure 3.11 shows the performance results for CODF relay channel. The results
in this case also indicate the superiority of the proposed scheme over CODF relay
channel. For the case of single relay R = 1, iterative decoding results in maxi-
mum PSNR gain of 4.5 dB compared to baseline scheme at channel SNR of 3 dB.
Maximum PSNR gain for R = 4 is of 5 dB at channel SNR of 2 dB.
3.6 Conclusion
In this chapter, an iterative soft decoding scheme for FEC based multiple descrip-
tions transmitted over wireless channel has been presented. The proposed decoding
algorithm is based on exchanging extrinsic information between FEC coded descrip-
tions and channel decoder. The proposed scheme allows soft information available
at the output of BCJR decoder (for decoding RSCC) to be applied for decoding
Reed-Solomon coded multiple descriptions and allows decoding beyond MDS capa-
bility. This scheme has been tested for transmission of SPIHT coded image over
point-to-point wireless channel and wireless channels aided by relays. Specifically,
for the case of relay channel, simulations have been performed for COAF and CODF
schemes. It has been shown that the proposed method can give considerable gains
in terms of reconstructed image PSNR, with respect to iterative schemes proposed
in literature.
******
65
32
30
Average PSNR (dB) 28
26
24
22
Iterative, R=4
20 Iterative, R=3
Iterative, R=2
Iterative, R=1
18
Tandem, R=4
Tandem, R=3
16 Tandem, R=2
Tandem, R=1
14
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
SNR (dB)
Figure 3.10: PSNR performance of the proposed iterative decoder compared to

baseline decoder for the case of transmission over COAF relay scheme. Simulation
is performed for the case of R number of relays participating in the transmission.
32
30
28
Average PSNR (dB)
26
24
22
Iterative, R=4
20 Iterative, R=3
Iterative, R=2
18 Iterative, R=1
Tandem, R=4
Tandem, R=3
16 Tandem, R=2
Tandem, R=1
14
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
SNR (dB)
Figure 3.11: PSNR performance of the proposed iterative decoder compared to

baseline decoder for the case of transmission over CODF relay scheme.
Chapter 4
Iterative Decoding of FEC Based

Multiple Descriptions with Hard
RS Decoder
In previous chapter, an iterative soft decision decoding of FEC based multiple de-
scriptions was proposed. Improvement in PSNR performance was achieved at the
cost of higher computational complexity compared to traditional FEC based MDC
decoding techniques. The main contribution towards the complexity was from SISO
Reed Solomon decoder. In this chapter, two FEC based MDC techniques are pre-
sented which use hard decision decoder for Reed Solomon code, resulting in lesser
computational complexity. Superiority of the proposed schemes in terms of PSNR
is also compared to the existing schemes in literature.
4.1 Introduction
Recently, the cloud transmission system for next generation terrestrial broadcasting
has been envisioned [70]. This study is intended to use the radio frequency (RF)
spectrum more efficiently. Such a system is robust to co-channel interference and
immune to multipath distortion. Hence, it can reduce or eliminate TV white-space
in order to be more robust and co-exist with unlicensed devices [197]. One of the
important feature of cloud transmission system is high degree of robustness against
66
67
co-channel interference. Since, the impact of co-channel interference is equivalent

to that of an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN), the cloud transmission sys-
tem should have a low AWGN signal to noise ratio (SNR) threshold [178, 197, 198].
In [70], the authors considered a quarter-rate LDPC code of the DVB-T2/S2 system
to achieve negative SNR threshold. Product codes which inherently integrate in-
terleaving into error control, offers a powerful error-correction method substituting
schemes where a large interleaver for correcting mixed types of errors is required. A
low density parity check-Reed Solomon (LDPC-RS) product code structure, along
with hybrid iterative decoding scheme was proposed in [177] for cloud transmission
system. In [197], authors proposed another two dimensional (2-D) code based on
LDPC and RS code for cloud transmission. Next, other significant works in the
area of image transmission using product codes are highlighted. We are specifically
interested in FEC based multiple description coding (MDC) which utilize such 2-D
product code structure.
Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is being considered for a
large number of applications in the field of telecommunication systems for its ability
to combat inter-symbol interference over frequency selective fading channel, com-
pared to single carrier communication. OFDM based transmission of progressive im-
age using space-time block code was proposed in [199]. A 2-D channel coding scheme
for image transmission using OFDM which employ time and frequency diversities
simultaneously was proposed in [78]. Authors of [79] analyzed the performance of
n-channel symmetric FEC-based multiple description coding for a progressive mode
of transmission over OFDM networks. A hard decision iterative decoding algorithm
for FEC based MDC (based on RS and convolutional code) transmitted over OFDM
channel was proposed in [80]. In this scheme the information of correctly decoded
RS codewords is exploited to enhance the error correction capability of the Viterbi
algorithm at the next iteration of decoding. The performance of the algorithm was
evaluated over OFDM system demonstrating significantly improved performance
over other schemes employing product code structures.
In this chapter, an iterative decoding algorithm for LDPC-RS based MDC is
presented for transmission of progressively coded image. For this purpose, LDPC-
68
RS product code proposed in cloud transmission literature [70, 177, 197] is applied.
OFDM is considered for transmission over AWGN and fading wireless channels.
The proposed algorithm takes advantage of correctly decoded codeword output of
RS decoder to enhance the error correction capability of the LDPC decoder at the
next iteration of sum-product algorithm (SPA). The algorithm works by selectively
modifying the log-likelihood ratios of the identified reliable bits. It is shown that
the proposed iterative LDPC-RS product code based progressive image transmission
scheme performs significantly better than baseline LDPC-RS coding scheme without
iterative decoding. Proposed system is also compared to a similar iterative design
for transmission of progressive image using RSCC-RS product code in [80] and
demonstrate improvement in performance.
In later part of this chapter, a scheme is proposed which extends the research
in [80] to include MIMO antenna system to achieve diversity gain in fading channel.
Our innovation lies in incorporating iterative decoding between FEC based mul-
tiple description decoder and MIMO demodulator. This results in two significant
outcomes. First outcome is improved decoding performance compared to similar
existing schemes in literature for coherent scenario. Secondly, for case without CSI,
the 3 dB performance gap is significantly narrowed down compared to a coherent
receivers. Simulations are performed for cases with and without channel state in-
formation (CSI) at the receiver.
Rest of the chapter is organized as follows. In Section 4.2, iterative decoding
scheme for LDPC-RS coded FEC based MDC is presented. In this section itself,
proposed encoding and decoding scheme is given and in Section 4.2.3, performance
of iterative decoder for LDPC-RS coded MDC is given. Iterative decoding of differ-
ential space-time coded FEC based MDC is presented in Section 4.3, with simulation
results given in Section 4.3.4. Finally, Section 4.4 is the conclusion.
69
Description 1 1 2 4 6 I LDPC Parity

Description 2 P 3
RS codewords
5 7 I LDPC Parity
Frequency
Description 3 P P P 8 I LDPC Parity
Description n P P P P I LDPC Parity
Time
Figure 4.1: n-channel FEC based multiple description coding technique for a pro-
gressive bitstream.
4.2 Iterative Decoding of LDPC-RS Coded FEC

Based MDC
4.2.1 Encoding in LDPC-RS Based MDC
In this section, proposed encoding scheme for FEC-based MDC is described which
use RS code as FEC code and LDPC code as channel code. An (n, k) RS code is a
maximum distance separable (MDS) code if dmin = n k + 1, where dmin is referred
to as minimum distance of the code. An (n, k) MDS code is a construction where
k information symbols are encoded into n channel symbols and reception of any
(ndmin +1) of the n channel symbols enables k information symbols to be recovered.
RS codes are typically decoded by Berlekamp-Massey (BM) algorithm [194]. In
RS code, each symbol is of m bits and source symbols for RS code are formed
by grouping m bits into a symbol. Let S = [S1 , S2 , ...], where Si GF (2m ), be
such a stream of symbols from a progressively coded source. The source can be
reconstructed progressively from the prefixes of the symbol stream S, while an error
renders the subsequent symbols useless. For example, if there is an error in symbol
i, source can be decoded using the preceding symbols [S1 , S2 , ..., Si1 ] and symbols
subsequent to Si cannot be utilized in the process of decoding.
A FEC-based multiple description code is obtained by applying unequal FEC
to different parts of symbol stream with the level of protection depending on the
relative importance of the information symbols and producing n equally important
70
descriptions. The realization of n-channel FEC based multiple description code

using RS code is shown in the Figure 4.1. There are p RS codeword (columns),
each of length n but containing different number of information symbols. Let kl
denote the number of information symbols in RS codeword l, where l = 1, ..., p.
The information symbols are provided with unequal error protection using (n, kl )
systematic RS codes, where 1 kl n. Thus, each RS code can correct up to
n kl erasures. Since in a progressively coded bitstream, information symbols at
the beginning of the stream S are more important than the symbols appearing after
them, error protection decreases for RS codewords as k1 k2 ... kp . LDPC
code is applied on each description for transmission over wireless channel. Finally,
individual descriptions are mapped to n subcarriers of the OFDM frame. At the
receiver, after LDPC decoding, descriptions are either decoded error-free or there is
a decoding failure. In case of failure, descriptions are declared as being erased.
Thus, depending on the quality of channel, decoding of some of the descrip-
tions may fail. This will result in decrease in quality of image or video and will
depend on the probability of receiving a description correctly. Let D(x) denote the
rate-distortion function of the source and D(0) indicate the distortion when decoder
reconstructs the image with no received information. Rate-distortion function in-
dicates the resulting distortion D of the source if x bits of information is received.
Average distortion E(D) is given as [80]
E(D) = D(0)P r(0) (4.2.1)

p p p
( ! !)
X X X
+ D mki P r mki (4.2.2)
l=1 i=1 i=1
where P r(x) the probability that x number of source bits are received without
encountering error. E(D) can also be expressed in terms of number of correctly
received description. Let P (i) denote the probability that number of correct de-
scriptions is i, then
1 1
kX
E(D) = D(0) (4.2.3)
i=0
p p kl+1 1
( ! !)
X X X
+ D mkp Pr P (i) (4.2.4)
l=1 i=1 i=kl
71
Row by row operation
Source RS Encoder C LDPC X OFDM

Encoder (Col. by col.) P1 Encoder P2 Modulator
Wireless
Channel
Row by row operation
^ ~ ^
Source C RS Decoder C X Log-SPA+WBF Lch OFDM
Decoder (Col. by col.) P-11 Decoder P-12 Demodulator
^ ~I LI
C LLR
P1 modification
Figure 4.2: Encoding and iterative decoding of LDPC-RS coded FEC based multiple
description scheme.
4.2.2 Iterative Decoding of LDPC-RS based MDC
The model of proposed system is shown in the Figure 4.2. In FEC based MDC
literature, encoding process consist of RS codes along the column and convolutional
code as rows [73, 74]. With our proposed application of LDPC code instead of
systematic convolutional code makes this coding scheme relevant to newer research
in the field of cloud transmission and terrestrial video broadcasting [177, 197]. Next
the proposed scheme is described in detail for the system model considered in this
paper.
The encoder, as depicted in top part of the Figure 4.2, consists of a progressive
source encoder (e.g. SPIHT) followed by RS encoder. The RS code based multi-
ple description encoder, described in earlier section, generates n equally important
descriptions C. The outer interleaver 1 is applied on each description so as to dis-
tribute the bits in a correctly decoded symbol throughout a packet or description.
1 is a bit-level interleaver in contrast to the symbol-level interleavers used in FEC
based multiple description coding literature. Each description is then individually
encoded with systematic LDPC code and bit level random inner interleaver 2 is
applied on the LDPC coded packet. 2 is a bit-level random channel interleaver
whose function is to distribute the effect of fading throughout the packet. The en-
72
coded descriptions constitute a 2-D arrangement of symbols as shown in the Figure

4.1, and at the last stage OFDM frame is formed from quadrature phase shift keying
(QPSK) modulated symbols extracted from each row.
Proposed iterative decoding scheme is described next as depicted in the lower
part of the Figure 4.2. OFDM demodulator provides the bit reliabilities, which after
deinterleaving with 1 ch
2 is given in the form of log likelihood ratio (LLR) L . If a
single LDPC coded description i is considered, LLR of bit t is
P [xi (t) = 0|y(t)]

Lch (xi (t)) = log (4.2.5)
P [xi (t) = 1|y(t)]
where, t = 1, ..., mL/R and R is the rate of LDPC code. Standard log-SPA is used
in this scheme for decoding of LDPC code. In the proposed decoding scheme, SPA is
performed row by row. Given high computational complexity of SPA decoder, mixed
set of decoding technique shall be applied for LDPC code [177]. After each step of
SPA, if the results do not satisfy the parity constraints, parallel weighted bit-flipping
(PWBF) [200] is applied on the a posteriori LLR obtained from SPA. One step of
SPA includes several iterations of SPA decoder. PWBF and similar algorithms are
effective in trading off between error performance and decoding complexity. PWBF
is based on its bit-flipping function which provides each bit in the hard-decision
vector with a measure of its reliability. Unreliable bits are then identified and
flipped. If the flipped hard-decision vector satisfies the parity check matrix, we stop.
Otherwise, bit-flipping function is recalculated for each bit and bit-flipping process
is continued. Though SPA is the best performing decoder for LDPC code over
continuous output channels, PWBF has the advantage of faster convergence. It has
been demonstrated that PWBF converges in about five iterations with performance
close to that of standard belief-propagation algorithm [200]. Next computations
associated with SPA is explained.
For the sake of clarity of notations, let L(t) = Lch (xi (t)) be the initial LLR of the
t-th variable node, H is the LDPC parity check matrix. Then, for each H(s, t) = 1,
set L(t s) = L(t), where L(t s) is the message sent from variable node t to
check node s. Outgoing message from check node s transmitted towards variable
73
nodes is computed as

Y 1
L(s t) = 2 tanh1 tanh{ L(t0 s)} (4.2.6)
2
t0 N (s){t}
where, N (s) are neighbouring variable nodes of s. Each variable node computes the
outgoing message L(t s) as
X
L(t s) = L(t) + L(s0 t) (4.2.7)
s0 N (t){s}
where, N (t) are neighbouring check nodes of t. For each variable node t = 1, 2, ..., n,
a posteriori LLR Lp (t) is calculated as
X
Lp (t) = L(t) + L(s t) (4.2.8)
sN (t)
When hard decision is performed on a posteriori LLRs of the bits of i-th description,
the estimate of bits of LDPC codeword in i-th description is

1 if Lp (t) < 0
xi (t) = (4.2.9)
0 else
The decoded LDPC codeword Xi = [xi (1), xi (2), ..., xi (pmn(1) /k (1) )]. If Xi satisfies
the parity check constraints, any further decoding for description i is halted; else,
PWBF is applied on a posteriori LLR Lp (t) obtained from last SPA stage. If PWBF
succeeds in decoding, the hard decision decoded codeword is saved as Xi .
Irrespective of the correctness of the decoded description, the bits within each
description are deinterleaved by the outer deinterleaver 1
1 . As already mentioned,
1 is a bit level intradescription interleaver and has no contribution in improving

the number of correctly decoded descriptions. But in an iterative system like the
one shown in the Figure 4.2, the interleaver has special function in the subsequent
iterations. Let c be the number of correctly decoded RS codewords at the end of
one iteration of decoding. Because of unequal error protection provided in different
RS codewords, the codewords with lower code rate (or more parity bits) are more
likely to be decoded correctly. Since, error protection decreases for RS codewords
as k1 k2 ... kp , as shown in the Figure 4.1, we will have c contiguous correct
symbols at the beginning of each packet or description. This makes us sure of
74
correctness of mc bits in LDPC code, and can be utilized to improve the reliability
of the remaining m(p c) bits in a description. In the subsequent iterations, mc
reliable information bits of LDPC code are spread using 1 and is utilized to modify
the channel LLR input to the SPA decoder. The iteration loop is run until all the
codewords are successfully decoded or maximum number of iterations is reached.
The implementation of the proposed scheme proceeds as given in Algorithm 4.1.
In the algorithm, it is assumed that the output of the OFDM demodulator and
deinterleaver 1
2 is given as Lch , which is a matrix consisting of rows of LDPC
codeword LLR Lch (xi ), stacked one over another, and is of the form similar to the
Figure 4.1. In the algorithm, step 1 initializes the count of decoding iterations. Step
2 runs the complete iterative decoding algorithm for maximum of Niter iterations.
One decoding iteration of LDPC code is run in Step 2.1 using SPA or PWBF.
Decoding status of LDPC and RS code are stored in flag arrays FLDP C and FRS ,
respectively. The flag is changed from 0 to 1 if codeword is decoded successfully.
In step 2.1.1, SPA is applied on a row of LDPC codeword only if FLDP C [i] 6= 1;
i.e. i th row of LDPC code has not already been decoded correctly. Updated edge
LLRs L(s t) and a posteriori LLR Lp (xi (t)) are saved for subsequent decoding
iterations. If after current iteration of SPA, a valid codeword is detected, FLDP C [i] is
set to 1. Otherwise, at step 2.1.2, PWBF is applied on Lp (xi (t)). If this results is a
valid codeword, FLDP C [i] is set to 1. This process is repeated for all n descriptions.
In step 2.2, if for all i, FLDP C [i] = 1, further LDPC-RS decoding iterations are
stopped and program jumps to step 3.
From the saved hard decisions X of LDPC decoder, systematic part I is extracted
(step 2.3). The p columns of I consist of interleaved bits of p RS codewords, which
are decoded with hard decision BM algorithm in step 2.5. If decoding is successful,
columns in C = 1
1 (I) is replaced with decoded codeword, otherwise erroneous
codeword is left as it is. For the correctly decoded RS codeword j, FRS (j) is set
to 1. If all the RS codewords are decoded successfully, the algorithm comes out
of iteration loop (while loop) at step 2.6. At step 2.7, channel LLR matrix Lch is
modified according to LLR modification algorithm (Algorithm 4.2) which accelerates
decoding convergence. Iterations are run till any of the escape conditions are satisfied
75
or number of iterations reaches maximum value. Finally source reconstructs the

image using successfully decoded RS codewords C.
LLR modification algorithm (Algorithm 4.2) sets the LLR of reliable bits to a
preset absolute maximum value of max . For instance, let LDPC codeword at row
i has been decoded erroneously. The bits responsible for the error is not known to
the decoder, but after one iteration, the location of some of the correct bits can be
found by identifying the bits associated with successfully decoded RS codewords. If
the RS codeword at column j has been decoded successfully, it can be safely assumed
that decoded bits belonging to jth symbol in ith row are correct. The algorithm sets
the LLR values in Lch corresponding to these bits to some preset absolute maximum
value max . This improves the likelihood of SPA decoder converging to a correct
codeword at subsequent iterations.
Algorithm 4.1
Definition:
Lch (xi (t)): LLR of t-th bit of i-th description at the input of LDPC decoder.
FRS : Array of flags indicating the decoding success of RS codes, initialized to zero.
FLDP C : Array of flags indicating the decoding success of LDPC codes, initialized to
zero.
Niter : Maximum number of decoding iterations.
1. Initialize: l = 1
2. While (l Niter ), do
2.1 For each row (or description) i [1, n], do
2.1.1 If FLDP C [i] 6= 1, do
A. Apply niter iterations of SPA to L(t) = Lch (xi ) and save the
calculated a posteriori LLR as Lp (xi (t)). Save the edge LLRs for
subsequent iterations.
B. Calculate hard decision performed on Lp (xi ) as Xi .
C. Calculate syndrome s = Xi H T . If s = 0, set FLDP C [i] = 1.
2.1.2 If FLDP C [i] 6= 1, do

76
A. Apply WBF to Lp (xi ) to get hard decision decoded output as Xi .
B. If Xi H T = 0, set FLDP C [i] = 1.
2.2 If for all i [1, n], FLDP C [i] = 1, exit while loop.

I
2.3 Extract the matrix I from X = , where I is the systematic part of
P
X = [X1 , ..., Xn ]T .
2.4 Obtain C = 1
1 (I), where C = [C1 , ..., Cj , ..., Cp ] is the 2D matrix
formed by the estimated RS codewords and Cj = [c1,j , c2,j , ..., cn,j ]T is

the j-th codeword.
2.5 For each column j [1, p], do
i. If FRS (j) = 0, decode Cj using BM algorithm and save the result as

Cj = [c1,j , c2,j , ..., cn,j ].
ii. If decoding is successful, set FRS (j) = 1; else Cj = Cj .
2.6 If for all j [1, p], FRS [j] = 1, exit while loop.
2.7 Modify channel LLR Lch using soft value modification algorithm (Algo-
rithm 4.2).
2.8 l = l + 1.
3. Apply source decoder to C = [C1 , ..., Cj , ..., Cp ] to reconstruct the transmitted

image.
Algorithm 4.2: LLR modification

Definition:
Lch : LLR at the input of LDPC decoder.
LI
LI : LLR of the systematic part of matrix Lch =
LP
max : Maximum LLR magnitude.
C: Matrix consisting of columns of decoded RS codewords
1. Interleave the RS codewords C to get I = 1 (C), where, I = [I1 , I2 , ..., In ]T .

Rows of bits Ii is the systematic part of hard decision estimate of ith LDPC
codeword.
77
2. For each row i [1, n] and column j [1, p], do
2.1 if (FLDP C (i) = 0) and (FRS (j) = 1)
i. For each bit b [(j 1)m + 1, jm] in the selected RS symbol, set
if Ii (b) = 0
max
L0I (i, b) =

max if Ii (b) = 1

0
LI
2.2 Modified channel LLR is Lch =
LP
4.2.3 Performance of Iterative Decoder for LDPC-RS based

MDC
In this section, performance of the proposed iterative decoding algorithm is eval-

uated. The images are encoded using the well known SPIHT algorithm [71] to
produce a progressively coded bitstream. The bitstream was converted to a stream
of GF (28 ) symbols by combining m = 8 bits. The multiple description encoder uses
(n, ki ) RS code, where n = 128 and the description size is 36 RS code symbols (i.e.
p = 36). Thus, the serial stream is converted into 128 parallel bitstreams using FEC-
based multiple description encoder algorithm by Mohr et al. [75] which provides the
values of ki . Each packet is then encoded with (576, 288) LDPC code from IEEE
802.16e standard. The 128 parallel streams are mapped to the OFDM system with
128 subcarriers. In each OFDM frame (Figure 4.1) RS code lie in frequency domain
and LDPC code lie in time domain. Following works in [80, 197], we apply QPSK
modulation and assume perfect channel state information (CSI) at the receiver.
To evaluate the advantage of iterative decoding, performance of the proposed de-
coder is compared with a baseline system consisting of FEC based multiple descrip-
tion decoder, but with LDPC and RS code decoded in tandem (LDPC decoder does
not receive any feedback from RS decoder). Perfromance of the decoding method
proposed in this paper is also compared to a similar decoding method of FEC based
multiple description coding in [80], which consists of soft-decision Viterbi decoder as
inner decoder and BM algorithm as outer decoder. In contrast to proposed scheme,
which uses inherent property of parity check matrix for detection of errors, [80]
78
uses 32 bit cyclic redundancy check (CRC) for detection of errors in descriptions.
Thus, in [80], number of information symbols transmitted per inner codeword (con-
volutional code) is 32 bytes, whereas, remaining four bytes are dedicated for CRC.
Because of this, maximum PSNR achievable by scheme in [80] will be less com-
pared to the proposed scheme. In this paper, simulation results were obtained for
transmission over AWGN, Rayleigh fading channels and frequency selective fading
channels.
In the Figure 4.3 to 4.6, we show results of the simulations carried out on SPIHT
coded, standard 8 bits-per-pixel (bpp) 128 128 Lena image transmitted with a
rate of 2 bpp. The algorithm is run for maximum of Niter = 5 number of iterations,
whereas each step of LDPC decoder consists of 25 SPA iterations. In the simulations,
peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) is used as a measure of reconstruction quality and
is plotted against average received channel SNR. For each simulation point, 300 trials
have been performed in order to average statistical variations.
Figure 4.3 compares PSNR performance of the proposed scheme for transmission
over AWGN channel. With the proposed scheme, maximum PSNR of 34.4 dB is ob-
tained at channel SNR of -2 dB. In contrast to this, the tandem scheme achieves this
maximum at channel SNR of -1.25 dB. For AWGN channel, the reference scheme
achieves maximum PSNR of 32.84 dB at channel SNR of -0.6 dB. Thus, the pro-
posed scheme achieves maximum PSNR performance for 0.75 dB less received power
compared to tandem scheme and 1.4 dB less compared to the reference scheme.
Next, simulations performed over Rayleigh fading channels are presented. Figure
4.4 compares the PSNR performance of the proposed scheme with tandem and ref-
erence scheme with Rayleigh channel parameter fD Ts = 0.01, where fD is Doppler
frequency and Ts is sampling time. It is evident that the proposed system outper-
forms both the reference schemes significantly in terms of average PSNR perfor-
mance. LDPC-RS iterative scheme achieves maximum PSNR at channel SNR of 9
dB, which is 3 dB less compared to tandem scheme. In this case, reference scheme
reaches maximum PSNR of 32.84 dB at channel SNR of 10 dB. The gap with respect
to proposed LDPC-RS iterative scheme is now 1 dB. It can be observed that perfor-
mance of reference scheme outperforms tandem scheme for transmission over fading
79
35
30
Average PSNR (dB)

25
20
15
LDPC-RS iterative
LDPC-RS tandem
Ref. scheme
10
-2.4 -2.2 -2 -1.8 -1.6 -1.4 -1.2 -1 -0.8 -0.6 -0.4
SNR (dB)
Figure 4.3: Comparison of PSNR performance as function of channel SNR for 128
128 Lena image transmitted over AWGN channel.
channel. This is in contrast to to AWGN channel where LDPC-RS tandem scheme

performs significantly better compared to the reference scheme. In the Figure 4.5,
performance is compared for fading channel with fD Ts = 0.05. Thus, from both
set of simulations, we observe significant improvement by the proposed LDPC-RS
iterative scheme compared to both tandem and reference schemes.
In the Figure 4.6, results of simulations performed over frequency selective fading
channel are shown. For these simulations, 6-tap COST 207 channel models [201]
available in Matlab are adopted. Performance was tested on two specific COST 207
channels, namely, typical rural area (RA or COST207RAx6) and typical urban (TU
or COST207TUx6). In case of RA model, the iterative scheme has advantage in
channel SNR of 4.5 dB in achieving maximum PSNR value compared to tandem
scheme. In case of TU also, iterative LDPC-RS scheme has advantage of 4.5 dB
in achieving maximum PSNR. Though, both the scheme achieve maximum PSNR
values at the same channel SNR values, their performance are completely different
at low SNR region. Both the schemes perform poor in TU channel. This can be
attributed to the stronger multipath components in TU channel compared to RA.
80
35
30
Average PSNR (dB)

25
20
15
LDPC-RS iterative
LDPC-RS tandem
Ref. scheme
10
5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
SNR (dB)
Figure 4.4: Performance comparison of the proposed scheme with two reference
schemes for Lena 128 128 image transmitted over Rayleigh fading channel with
fD Ts = 0.01.
35
30
Average PSNR (dB)
25
20
LDPC-RS iterative
15
LDPC-RS tandem
Ref. scheme
5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
SNR (dB)
Figure 4.5: Performance comparison of the proposed scheme with two reference
schemes for Lena 128 128 image transmitted over Rayleigh fading channel with
fD Ts = 0.05.
81
35
30
Average PSNR (dB)

25
20
Iterative in 'COST207RAx6'
Tandem in 'COST207RAx6'
15 Iterative in 'COST207TUx6'
Tandem in 'COST207TUx6'
3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
SNR (dB)
Figure 4.6: Performance comparison of the proposed scheme with LDPC-RS tandem
scheme for Lena 128128 image transmitted over two COST 207 frequency selective
channels.
4.3 Iterative Decoding of Differential Space-time

Coded FEC based MDC
4.3.1 Preliminaries
RSCC-RS based MDC
Figure 4.7 illustrates the actual realization of n-channel FEC based MDC considered
in this section. Similar to earlier section, RS codes are applied along the columns.
Descriptions are formed along the rows and appended with CRC. Each description
is then channel coded with recursive systematic convolutional code (RSCC) before
transmission.
Differential Space-Time Codes
In this section, we shall focus on differential space-time block code (DSTBC) of

Hughes [202] for multiple antenna transmission. DSTBC can be demodulated with-
82
Description 1 1 2 4 6 Info Info CRC RSCC

Description 2 Parity 3 5 7 Info Info CRC RSCC
Description 3 Parity Parity Parity 8 Info Info CRC RSCC
Parity Parity Parity Parity Info Info CRC RSCC
Description n Parity Parity Parity Parity Parity Parity CRC RSCC

RS codewords
Figure 4.7: Formation of multiple descriptions from a progressive bitstream using

Reed-Solomon code and convolutional code.
out channel knowledge at a loss of 3 dB in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) with respect to

decoding similar space time code with complete channel knowledge. DSTBC code of
Hughes are based on unitary matrices with a group structure, forming a space-time
group code. If G be the group of unitary matrices, then GH G = GGH = I for all
G G. For a system of T transmit antennas with constellation C, for space time code
C C and for any S T there is a matrix D such that C = DG for all G G [203].
For example, with T = S = 2, the BPSK group is G = {G(0) , G(1) , G(2) , G(3) },
where
1 0 0 1
G(0) = = G(1) , G(2) = = G(3) (4.3.10)
0 1 1 0
and
1 1
D= (4.3.11)
1 1
Encoded output in DSTBC, similar to differential phase shift keying, depends on
the previous transmitted symbol. The fundamental difference equation for the cal-
culation of encoded symbol at time i is
Xi = Ci = G(f (di )) Ci1 (4.3.12)
For calculating first symbol C1 (at time i = 1), the reference symbol taken
is C0 = D. In (4.3.12), G(f (di )) is one of the symbols in the group G and f (di )
is a rule or function that maps bits pairs di {00, 01, 10, 11} to one of the four
symbols in the set G. Group property ensures that Ci is a codeword if Ci1 C is
a codeword. Xi is used to indicate the transmitted DSTBC symbol. The S rows
83
of Ci are transmitted as S consecutive space-time symbols. To decode the received

signal yi , there is a simple differential receiver which computes [202]
G = max R Tr Gyi yi1 (4.3.13)

GG
In contrast to straight forward method of decoding given in (4.3.13), which incurs

a 3 dB loss, we shall apply MAP decoder proposed in [181] for iterative decoding.
Because of one unit delay involved in differential operation in (4.3.12), the encoder
can be described by a trellis similar to convolutional code. Hence, MAP decoding
by algorithms like BCJR [12] is also possible.
4.3.2 System Description
The basic transmitter is shown in the Figure 4.8. Multimedia information is encoded
by a progressive source encoder (e.g. SPHIT or JPEG 2000) to produce a bitstream
u. The contiguous source bits are grouped into RS code symbols of m bits, i.e.
GF (2m ). As explained in 4.3.1, these symbols are encoded with (n, k) RS code with
level of protection depending on relative importance of information symbols. If the
RS codewords are arranged as columns in the Figure 4.7, descriptions or packets are
obtained by extracting symbols along the rows. Each descriptions is encoded, row-
by-row, using recursive systematic convolutional code (RSCC) to produce bitstream
r. Bits in a RSCC coded description are interleaved and fed into DSTBC encoder
block for transmission through wireless channel.
Transmission takes place over a channel with T transmit and U receive antennas.
At time slot i, the transmitting antennas transmits S rows of STBC symbol Xi over
the channel. The demodulated baseband signal at a receive antenna at time i is
r

yi = Xi H i + N i (4.3.14)
T
where Hi = [htu (i)] is the T U channel gain matrix, Ni is AWGN matrix with
variance of each element being 2 = N0 /2, and Xi is transmitted code from (4.3.12).
At the receiver, three stage serially concatenated iterative decoding scheme is
applied where information is exchanged to and fro between DSTBC demodulator
(inner decoder), RSCC decoder (middle decoder) and RS decoder (outer decoder).
84
Packet RSCC
Source u RS Code c r d DSTBC
Encoder (column by formation Encoder P
column) (row by row) (row by row)
Encoder
X
Figure 4.8: Encoder block diagram consisting of cascade of FEC based multiple
description coder and DSTBC.
p
Le(d) La(r) L (r) BM RS Estimated
DSTBC RSCC APP ^
r ^
-1 Hard Decoder c bits
APP P Decoder
y (row by row) Decision (Column by
Decoder column)
^ a
L (d ) Le(r) La(r)
H
Channel
estimate Soft value
P modification
Inner loop (LI iterations ) Outer loop (LO iterations )
Figure 4.9: Iterative decoding of FEC based multiple descriptions, consists of three
concatenated stages.
The serially concatenated decoder is shown in the Figure 4.9. Inner and middle
decoder use the a posteriori probability (APP) decoding algorithm, whereas outer
decoder uses the hard decision BM algorithm. The three stages form two iterative
decoding loops: inner decoding loop and outer decoding loop, as explained in next
section.
4.3.3 Three Stage Iterative Decoder
In the iterative decoder of the Figure 4.9, the inner decoding loop consists of DSTBC
APP decoder and RSCC APP decoder. DSTBC decoder receives signal yi at time
i and outputs extrinsic information Le (di ), which is then deinterleaved and applied
to RSCC APP decoder as a priori input La (ri ). Extrinsic output Le (ri ) is applied
back to DSTBC APP decoder, while a posteriori output Lp (ri ) acts as input for
outer loop. Both the decoders in inner loop use BCJR algorithm for SISO decoding.
Outer decoding loop consists of performing hard decision on output Lp (ri ) of RSCC
decoder and hard decision RS decoding by BM algorithm. RS code being block code,
it is not difficult to identify those RS codewords (columns in the Figure 4.7) which
85
were decoded successfully. Flags FRS (j), j = 1, ..., p indicating successfully decoded
RS codewords is passed to the soft value modification block, which modifies the a
priori input to RSCC APP decoder. Both the decoding loops are run for predefined
number of iterations. Number of inner and outer iterations are indicated by LI and
LO , respectively. Next, each of these blocks are explained in more detail.
Inner DSTBC APP Decoder: Decoding with CSI
To keep the calculations simple, a system with two transmit and one receive antenna
as described in (4.3.1) is being considered. Generalization to multiple transmit and
receive antennas is straight forward. At time i, if Xi = Ci were transmitted, (4.3.14)
can be written as r

yi = C i Hi + N i (4.3.15)
T
where yi = [y1i , y2i ]T is a vector of two discrete received signals. Received signal
probability conditioned on transmitted code and channel gain is then
1
p(yi |Ci , Hi ) exp( kyi Ci Hi k2 ) (4.3.16)
2 2
The APP decoder utilizes the conditional probability in (4.3.16) for optimal decod-
ing. The decoder calculates APP or log-likelihood ratio (LLR) of each bit
P (dji = 1|Y)
Lp (dji ) = log (4.3.17)
P (dji = 0|Y)
where dji is the j-th bit of the i-th transmitted DSTBC symbol and Y is the entire
received sequence Y = [y1 , ..., yi , ...]. In this specific example, j = 1, 2, indicating
two bits per symbol in BPSK group.
As mentioned earlier, DSTBC encoding can be represented with a trellis and
can be decoded with usual trellis based decoding methods like Viterbi and BCJR
decoder. Trellis diagram for code set defined by (4.3.10) and (4.3.12) is shown in
the Figure 4.10(a), where state of the encoder Si = Ci . There are M transitions
per state, where M = |G| is the cardinality of set G. Because of optimal and SISO
nature of BCJR algorithm, it is used here for APP decoding of DSTBC. The set of
all state transitions (m0 , m) corresponding to input bit dji = b be is defined by the
trellis (Figure 4.10(a)), where
{(m0 , m) : dji = b, Si1 = m0 , Si = m} (4.3.18)

86
Si-1 Si Si-3Si-2Si-1 Si-2Si-1Si

G0
0 G1 0 000 000
G3 100 100
G2
G1 200 200
G0
1 G3
1 300 300
G2
010 010
G3 G 2 110 110
2 G0 2 210 210
G1
310 310
G3
G2 G1 020 020
3 G0 3
(a) (b)
Figure 4.10: (a) Basic trellis structure of BPSK group DSTBC, (b) Section of ex-
tended trellis of BPSK group DSTBC for P = 2 having 64 states.
These are the set of transition at time i corresponding to input Gi , where Gi = f (di )
has been obtained by simple mapping from a pair of bits. Probability of transition
from state m0 to m at time i is
i (m0 , m) = P (Si1 = m0 , Si = m, Y) (4.3.19)
and can be written in terms of BCJR algorithm as
i (m0 , m) = i1 (m0 )i (m0 , m)i (m) (4.3.20)
i1 (m0 )i (m0 , m) is obtained through forward recursion through

P
where i (m) = m0
trellis and i (m) = m0 i+1 (m0 )i+1 (m, m0 ) is obtained by backward recursion. Us-
P
ing (4.3.16), the transition metric between state m0 and m is given as
i (m0 , m) = P (Gi )p(yi |Ci , Hi )

X 1 (4.3.21)
exp{ dji La (dji ) 2 kyi Ci Hi k2 }
j
2
where, La (dji ) is a priori LLR obtained from the middle decoder. APP LLR for
each bit is then calculated as
i (m0 , m)
P
p (m0 ,m):dji =1
L (dji ) = P (4.3.22)
(m0 ,m):dji =0 i (m0 , m)
87
The extrinsic LLR which is passed on to the next decoder is
Le (dji ) = Lp (dji ) La (dji ) (4.3.23)
Inner DSTBC APP Decoder: Decoding with Estimated CSI
In (4.3.21), fading channel gain coefficients or CSI are required for calculation of
transition metric between states. Similar to DPSK, channel state information is not
essential for decoding DSTBC successfully. If current channel gain Hi is not known,
they can be estimated using linear prediction [204] using previous channel estimates
Hi .
P P
X 1X
Hi = wn Hin = wn CH
in yin (4.3.24)
n=1
2 n=1
where, P is the prediction order and w = [w1 , ..., wP ]T are predictor coefficients
obtained by solving Wiener-Hopf equation Rw = r. Specifically for the case of
T = S = 2 and channel gain being constant for a minimum duration of a STBC
symbol (or two bit periods), matrix R is given as

r0 r2 . . . r2(P 1)

r2 r0 . . . r2(P 1)+2
..

.. .. .. ..
(4.3.25)
. . . . .

r2(P 1) r2(P 1)+2 . . . r0
and r = [r2 , r4 , ..., r2P ]T . The coefficients rn are autocorrelation coefficients of the
channel process. For Rayleigh flat fading channels, the autocorrelation is rn =
J0 (2fD Ts n) with r0 = 1 + 2 2 , where fD is maximum Doppler frequency and Ts is
sampling period. J0 is first order Bessel function.
Using the channel estimate in (4.3.24), Nguyen and Ingram [181] calculated the
transition metric i (m0 , m) between states as
P
X
a 1 1X
exp{ dji L (dji ) 2 kyi w n CH 2
in yin k } (4.3.26)
j
2pre 2 n=1
2
PP
The variance term in (4.3.26) is 2pre = r0 {1 n=1 wn (r2n /r0 ).The symbols
Ci1 , ..., CiP are replaced according to per-survivor principle [205]. For this pur-
pose, MAP BCJR algorithm is now carried over expanded trellis with M P states and
88
there are M transitions per state for input corresponding to G G. As an example,

a section of trellis with M = 4, P = 2 or 64 states is shown in the Figure 4.10(b).
For P = 2, states are defined as combination of three possible states (from basic
trellis) or DSTBC outputs Si2 Si1 Si = Ci2 Ci1 Ci . If states m0 = Si3 Si2 Si1
and m = Si2 Si1 Si , the transition metric in (4.3.26) is calculated using the state
Si2 Si1 Si = Ci2 Ci1 Ci .
Middle RSCC APP Decoder
The inner decoder passes extrinsic information Le (dji ) to next stage, which on dein-
terleaving, acts as a priori information La (ri ) for the RSCC APP decoder. The
APP decoder for RSCC is conventional SISO BCJR decoder [12]. It calculates the
a posteriori LLR of output as Lp (ri ) and binary hard decision is performed on it
ri = sgn Lp (ri ) (4.3.27)
where sgn is the signum function. The hard decision ri passed on to outer RS
decoder, irrespective of the correctness of the descriptions. Correctness of the de-
scription is checked using CRC and if description i satisfies CRC, flag FRSCC (i) is
set to 1. CRC block is not shown in the Figure 4.8 and the Figure 4.9 to avoid clut-
tering the the figures. The extrinsic information of the coded bits, which is returned
back to inner decoder, is
Le (ri ) = Lp (ri ) La (ri ) (4.3.28)
Outer RS Decoder
As stated before, for RS codeword l having nkl parity symbols, the RS decoder (i.e.
BM algorithm) can correct up to n kl erasures. Since, k1 k2 ... kp due to
unequal error protection, it is very likely that the correctly decoded RS codewords
(columns in the Figure 4.7) would be placed contiguously at the left end of the
product code. Similar to scheme in Section 4.2, correctly decoded RS codewords are
indicated with value 1 in flag array FRS .
If c is the number of correctly decoded RS codewords, we know that there are
mc correct bits in each description, where m is the number of bits per RS code
89
symbol. These bits correspond to the mc information bits of each convolutional

code. The function of soft value modification block in the Figure 4.9 is to modify
the a priori LLR bits in La (ri ) corresponding to these mc possibly correct bits in each
description. For better explanation, soft value modification is shown in the form of
pseudo code in Algorithm 4.3. This accelerates the convergence of the succeeding
MAP decoding of RSCC code and offer better error performance.
Algorithm 4.3: Soft value modification
Definition:
La (r): RSCC a priori LLR input.
max : Maximum LLR magnitude.
c: Matrix consisting of columns of decoded RS codewords.
1. Interleave the RS codewords c to get I = (c), where, I = [I1 , I2 , ..., In ]T .

Rows of bits Ii is the systematic part of hard decision estimate of ith RSCC
codeword.
2. For each row i [1, n] and column j [1, p], do
2.1 if (FRSCC (i) = 0) and (FRS (j) = 1)
i. For each bit b [(j 1)m + 1, jm] in the selected RS symbol, set
if Ii (b) = 0
a max
L (r)(i, b) =

max if Ii (b) = 1
2.2 Modified a priori input to middle decoder is La (r)
4.3.4 Performance of Iterative Decoder for Differential Space-

time Coded FEC based MDC
In this section, performance of the proposed iterative decoding algorithm is evalu-

ated. The standard 8-bits-per-pixel (bpp) 128 128 images are encoded using the
well known SPIHT algorithm [71] to produce a progressively coded bitstream of
rate 2 bpp. The bitstream was converted to a stream of GF (28 ) symbols, where
each symbol was obtained by combining m = 8 bits. This serial symbol stream
was converted into 128 parallel bitstreams or descriptions using FEC-based mul-
tiple description encoder algorithm by Mohr at al. [75]. The multiple description
90
35
30
Average PSNR (dB)

25
20
(L I , LO) = 4
15 (L I , LO) = 3
(L I , LO) = 2
(L I , LO) = 1
10
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
SNR (dB)
Figure 4.11: PSNR as function of channel SNR for different number of global itera-
tions in Rayleigh fading channel.
encoder uses (n, ki ) RS code, where n = 128 and the description size is 32 RS code
symbols (i.e. p = 32). All the descriptions are CRC coded. RSCC of rate 1/2 and
generator polynomial (15, 17)8 is applied for channel coding. While decoding, it is
assumed that any error in a description is detected by CRC and the description will
be treated as erasure.
The goal of our simulation is to see how the proposed receiver with RS-RSCC-
DSTBC iterative decoding compares with reference MDC iterative decoder pro-
posed in literature. For comparison, baseline scheme proposed in [80] consisting of
RS-RSCC iterative decoder is being considered. For fair comparison, RSCC coded
descriptions in baseline scheme are encoded with Alamouti STBC [206]. Perfor-
mance is evaluated in terms of peak-signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) as function of
average channel SNR. In all results, we shall compare the channel SNR required to
achieve maximum PSNR, unless mentioned otherwise. There are two set of computer
simulation results.
In the first set of simulations, the effect of iteration on the improvement in
PSNR curve is studied when CSI available at the receiver. For this purpose the
91
35
30
L I = 4, L O = 4
Average PSNR (dB)

L I = 3, L O = 4
L I = 2, L O = 4
25
L I = 1, L O = 4
L I = 4, L O = 2
L I = 3, L O = 2
20
L I = 2, L O = 2
L I = 1, L O = 2
L I = 4, L O = 1
15 L I = 3, L O = 1
L I = 2, L O = 1
L I = 1, L O = 1
10
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
SNR (dB)
Figure 4.12: PSNR as function of channel SNR for different values of inner and
outer loop iterations in Rayleigh fading channel.
proposed scheme is tested over Rayleigh fast fading channel, i.e. fading coefficients
are assumed to be constant for at least the duration of STBC symbol. Figure 4.11
shows improvement in PSNR curve with number of iterations. The iterations are
global in the sense that one iteration of inner loop is followed by one iteration of
outer loop and so on. For clarity, one such global iteration is indicated in the figure
as (LI , LO ) = 1. With two iterations(indicated as (LI , LO ) = 2 in the figure), the
transmission power required to achieve maximum value of PSNR is about 1.5 dB
less compared to PSNR for one iteration ((LI , LO ) = 1). Maximum value of PSNR
is obtained for four iterations ((LI , LO ) = 4) and channel SNR of 1.4 dB. It can
also be observed that rate of improvement of PSNR as function of channel SNR
(as indicated by the slope of curve) improves with number of iterations. This may
be attributed to the acceleration of convergence provided by turbo-like iteration
decoding architecture.
Next set of simulations were performed for local iterations: LI number of it-
erations of inner loop is followed by LO number of iteration of outer loop. This
allows us to isolate the decoding gain provided by the individual decoding loops.
92
As shown in the Figure 4.12, keeping number of outer iterations LO to a constant

value, number of inner iterations LI are varied from one to four. For four number
of inner iterations followed by four outer iterations (i.e. LI = 4, LO = 4), maximum
PSNR is obtained at channel SNR of 1.4 dB, which is 1.6 dB less power compared
to (LI = 1, LO = 4). Also, the gain provided by outer loop iterations varies as
function of LI . For instance, if LI = 1, the gain provided by four iterations of outer
decoding loop is 0.8 dB in terms of channel SNR. This value reduces to 0.2 dB of
channel SNR when LI = 4. This can be interpreted as follows. If code redundancy
is not completely exploited by the inner decoding loop, it can be utilized to a certain
extent in the outer decoding loop. Since, outer decoding loop utilizes hard decisions
for iteration gain, it does not provide gains comparable to a soft decision iterative
decoder similar to inner loop.
Second set of simulations are performed for Jakes fading channel model. The
proposed scheme, with and without CSI, is compared to the baseline scheme (with
CSI). Figure 4.13 shows the simulation result for high mobility channel in which
fD Ts = 0.01. If CSI is available at the receiver, the proposed scheme achieves
maximum PSNR at channel SNR of 1.2 dB, whereas this value is 1.8 dB for baseline
scheme. Thus, the proposed scheme achieves the same PSNR performance for 0.6
dB less power. When using linear prediction and per-survivor processing for non
coherent case, the difference in channel SNR (to achieve maximum PSNR) compared
to coherent case is 1.0 dB and 1.4 dB for prediction order of 3 and 2, respectively.
Thus, proposed iterative decoding scheme reduces the 3 dB performance gap of
differential detection system to a value of 1.0 dB. With higher order of prediction
P , this gap can be reduced further.
Figure 4.14 considers lower mobility channel with fD Ts = 0.005. Maximum
PSNR is achieved at channel SNR of 1.6 dB for the proposed scheme, whereas
baseline scheme requires channel SNR of 2.0 dB. Power required for baseline scheme
is 0.4 dB higher compared to proposed scheme. With linear prediction and per-
survivor processing, maximum PSNR is obtained at SNR of 2.4 dB and 2.6 dB for
prediction order of 3 and 2, respectively. For P = 3, channel SNR gap compared
to coherent case is 0.8 dB, in contrast to a gap of 1.0 dB in Jakes model with
93
35
30
Average PSNR (dB)

25
20
L I = 4, L O = 4, w/ CSI
15 L I = 4, L O = 1, w/ CSI
w/o CSI, P = 2
w/o CSI, P = 3
Baseline w/ CSI
10
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
SNR (dB)
Figure 4.13: PSNR performance of proposed scheme compared to baseline scheme

as function of channel SNR in Jakes channel with fD Ts = 0.01.
fD Ts = 0.01. Finally, PSNR performance of some of the common test image is

compared with baseline scheme at different values of channel SNR in Table 4.1.
4.4 Conclusion
In section 4.2, a novel method has been proposed for iterative decoding of LDPC-
RS based MDC transmitted over fading channel. The proposed scheme employs
RS codes to form multiple descriptions and each description is channel coded with
LDPC code. The descriptions are OFDM modulated and transmitted over wireless
channel. At the receiver, soft decision output of OFDM demodulator is applied
to LDPC decoder. An iteration of proposed decoder consists of one step of sum-
product algorithm (for decoding LDPC code) and RS decoder. Successfully decoded
bits in RS codeword are applied back to improve the decoding performance of inner
LDPC code in subsequent iterations. Decoded LDPC codewords in turn improve the
decoding of RS code. Experimental results showed the superiority of the proposed
scheme in comparison to similar decoding schemes in literature.
94
34
32
30
Average PSNR (dB)

28
26
24
22
20
18 (L I ,L O) = 4, w/ CSI
w/o CSI, P = 2
16 w/o CSI, P = 3
Baseline w/ CSI
14
0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
SNR (dB)
Figure 4.14: PSNR performance of proposed and baseline scheme in Jakes channel
with fD Ts = 0.005.
In section 4.3, a three stage iterative decoding scheme consisting of DSTBC as

inner code and FEC based multiple description system as outer code has been pre-
sented. The inner decoding loop consists of DSTBC and RSCC decoder exchange
soft decisions, whereas, outer decoding loop consists of RSCC decoder and RS de-
coder exchange binary information. This scheme is proposed for transmission of pro-
gressively coded image through fading channel, where DSTBC provides space-time
diversity. Simulations has been performed over Jakes fading channel and compared
to similar MDC schemes in literature. Differential detection systems without CSI
results in performance loss of at least 3 dB. However, using the proposed three stage
iterative decoder, this performance gap is reduced to 0.8 dB, which can be reduced
further with higher order prediction.
******
95
Table 4.1: Performance advantage of proposed scheme in Jakes fading channel with
fD Ts = 0.01 with CSI
PSNR (dB)
Image SNR 0.8 dB 1.0 dB 1.2 dB 1.4 dB
Iterative 28.46 33.17 33.96 33.96

Lena
Baseline 19.77 22.35 25.87 30.50
Iterative 19.90 21.15 20.96 21.35

Baboon
Baseline 18.89 20.38 20.62 21.26
Iterative 26.88 26.66 26.76 27.06

Cameraman
Baseline 24.94 25.36 25.93 27.05
Chapter 5
Iterative Soft Decision

Source-Channel Decoding of
Multiple Description Coded Image
Arithmetic coding (AC) is currently being deployed in growing number of compres-

sion standards such as JPEG 2000 for still pictures and H.264 for video. AC is also
coupled with image coding schemes like SPIHT to achieve further compression [71].
AC has higher compression performance compared to other lossless compression
methods. However, it has poor resynchronization properties which motivated the
development of joint source-channel (JSC) techniques based on AC [115].
In this chapter, JSC coding for AC in the context of MDC is studied. JSC coding
scheme for AC is proposed which utilize unity rate accumulator for improvement of
bit error rate performance. JSC for ACs is then applied in the context of multi-
ple description scalar quantizer (MDSQ) based two-channel MDC transmitted over
noisy channel. Finally, JSC for AC is applied to an existing MDC scheme in litera-
ture and it is demonstrated that the proposed scheme significantly outperforms the
reference scheme in terms of error performance over noisy channel.
96
97
5.1 Introduction
As mentioned before, MDC generates multiple descriptions of the source in such a
way that each description independently describes the source with certain fidelity.
The goal is to be able to decode an error-free output when all the descriptions are
available and decode a slightly distorted output when only some of the descriptions
are available. FEC based MDC is one of such technique discussed in earlier chapters.
In this chapter, we explore MDSQ based two-channel MDC which generates two
equally independent descriptions. Vaishampayan [31] proposed the first constructive
approach towards a multiple description scheme by using MDSQ and considered a
special case, namely the balanced descriptions. Creating multiple equally important
descriptions may be desirable in MDC systems when there is no need to differentiate
the importance of one description from another.
The MDSQ of Vaishampayan works as follows. The signal is sampled using a
regular scalar quantizer and a sample X is assigned a quantization index I. Then,
multiple description index assignment is done, mapping each index I to a codeword
index pair (I1 , I2 ) from codebook shown in the Figure 5.1. Figure 5.1(a) shows the
staggered index assignment matrix, where cells of the quantizer correspond to the
quantization index I numbered from 0 to 8. The row and column indices (I1 and
I2 )of the matrix form the indices of the two descriptions 1 and 2, respectively. If
both the side index values (I1 , I2 ) are available at the receiver, the central decoder
can recover the original index I back. If only one index (I1 or I2 ) is available,
side decoder estimates sample X as the expected value by keeping available index
fixed. For example, in the Figure 5.1(a), if only I1 = 2 is known, I2 is obtained by
calculating expectation of I2 = 4 and I2 = 5. Also, the quality of reconstruction at
the side decoders depend on the number of diagonals in the index assignment matrix.
The number of unoccupied cells in the matrix constitute redundancy, indicating the
need of further compression by entropy coder. Figure 5.1(b) shows index assignment
matrix with three diagonals and having lower redundancy.
In this work, MDSQ is applied to wavelet coefficients. A given image is de-
composed into subbands, and then a uniform scalar quantizer is applied to each of
the subband coefficients, producing a quantized field. MDSQ index assignment on
98
I1 I1
0 1 2 3 4 0 1 2 3 4
0 0 0 0 2
1 1 2 1 1 3 4
I2 2 3 4 I2 2 5 6 8
3 5 6 3 7 9 10
4 7 8 4 11 12
Figure 5.1: Multiple description index assignment: (a) 2 diagonal staggered quanti-
zation cells; (b) 3 diagonal higher spread quantization cells.
quantized coefficients produces two descriptions. SPIHT coding is applied to these

two descriptions to produce two bitstreams. SPIHT coded bitstreams are arithmetic
coded for further compression and channel coded with RSCC before transmission
over noisy channel.
In this chapter, proposed schemes are described which can utilize soft information
at the input of a MDC receiver. In contrast to some of existing schemes in litera-
ture where MDC transmission channel is assumed to be a bit-flipping and packet
loss channel, a more practical channel condition is considered with additive white
Gaussian noise (AWGN). Our main contribution is utilizing soft decision output of
channel at the receiver for SISO decoding of AC stage in the context of MDC. In the
proposed MDC schemes, it is demonstrated that performance of two-channel MDC
scheme can be improved by utilizing soft information in the form of received sig-
nal LLR and noise resilient decoding of arithmetic codes without the need of extra
redundancy.
Rest of the chapter is organized as follows. In Section 5.2, iterative source-
channel decoding of AC is introduced. In this section itself, we explain the proposed
accumulator aided source-channel decoding scheme for AC and evaluate its perfor-
mance in AWGN channel. In Section 5.3, a two-channel MDC system based on
MDSQ and SPIHT coding of wavelet trees is described. In Section 5.4,an iterative
scheme is proposed by employing Chase-type SISO arithmetic decoder for decoding
of multiple descriptions transmitted over AWGN and packet loss channels. Finally,
Section 5.5 is conclusion.
99
u
(1)
Arithmetic c
(1)
u
(2)
RSCC x
encoder P encoder
e (1)
L (c )
a (1)
L (u )
e (2) + n
L (u ) SISO arithmetic P-1 RSCC MAP
decoder decoder
e (1) P a (2) y
L (c ) L (u )
Figure 5.2: Soft-input soft-output decoding of AC based on Chase algorithm.
5.2 Iterative Source-Channel Decoding of AC
5.2.1 Low Complexity SISO Decoding of AC
A low complexity SISO arithmetic decoder based on Chase-like decoding [111] was
proposed in [115]. The system consists of a finite alphabet source, an AWGN channel
and an arithmetic decoder as shown in the Figure 5.2. The source generates packets
of L symbols u(1) = [u11 , ..., u1L ]. Each packet is then compressed using arithmetic
encoder [207] and the resulting binary stream c(1) = [c11 , ..., c1M ] is of variable length
M . c(1) is interleaved to produce u(2) and acts as input to RSCC encoder. BPSK
modulated output of RSCC encoder x is transmitted over an zero-mean AWGN
channel of noise variance 2 .
Output of the channel at the receiver can be given as y = x + n. At the de-
coder, the received signal is iteratively decoded by exchanging extrinsic information
between SISO arithmetic decoder and the MAP BCJR decoder. As shown in the
Figure 5.2, extrinsic output Le (u(2) ) of BCJR decoder is deinterleaved to produce
a priori information La (c(1) ) for the arithmetic decoder. Extrinsic output Le (c(1) )
of the arithmetic decoder is fed back as a priori information La (u(2) ) to the BCJR
decoder.
At the receiver, the arithmetic decoder is based on the MAP principle. A sum-
mary of the low complexity Chase-type SISO decoding algorithm [115] for AC is
given next.
1. Apply hard decision over a priori input La (c(1) ) = [1 , 2 , ..., M ] to get c(1) .
Bit reliabilities [|1 |, |2 |, ..., |M |] are calculated as magnitude of the LLR
values.
100
2. Determine the location of q least reliable elements of c(1) based on reliability

values |i |.
(i) (i)
3. Generate 2q test patterns t(i) = [t1 , ..., tM ], 0 < i 2q , each of length M . Each
test pattern has maximum weight q with all the possible bit combinations in
the q least reliable positions.
4. Form test vectors z(i) = c(1) t(i) , 0 < i 2q , where, is bit-wise XOR
operation. Each test vector is decoded using classical arithmetic decoding.
5. If the decoded sequence (for i-th test vector) has exactly L decoded symbols
and correct end-of-block (EoB) symbol is decoded (length-valid sequence),
calculate its distance metric as:
M 2
(i) 1 X j (i)
D = 2 hj + log P (u(i) ) (5.2.1)
2 j=1 Lc
(i) (i)
where, hj = 1 2zj , and Lc is channel reliability value. P (u(i) ) is the a
priori source probability of decoded sequence corresponding to z(i) .
6. The decoded bit stream, denoted as u(1) , is the sequence with highest metric.
7. To calculate the extrinsic output value, we find the set of bits positions J =
[j1 , j2 , ...] for which bit values are same for all length-valid candidate sequences.
It is clear that the positions j J where we have same bit for all candidate
sequences are the most reliable bits. The extrinsic value assigned to those bits
(1) (1)
are Le (cj ) = (1 2zj ) for all j J and Le (cj ) = 0 for all j
/ J. The
constant is determined empirically to obtain best error performance.
5.2.2 Accumulator Aided SISO Decoding of AC
Use of accumulators have been proposed in many wireless communication systems

for close mapping of EXIT charts of two SISO decoders. Authors in [208] use
doped accumulator on the top of a bit interleaved coded modulation with iterative
detection (BICM-ID) structure such that the EXIT curve matches more closely with
outer decoder. In [116] authors use doped accumulator for achieving turbo-cliff. We
101
u
(1)
Arithmetic
(1)
c u
(2)
RSCC c
(2)
u
(3)
Rate 1 x
encoder P encoder
P ACC
e (1)
(1)
L (c )
a (2)
L (u )
e
L (c )
a
L (u )
(2) e (3)
+ n
L (u ) SISO arithmetic -1 P-1
P RSCC MAP ACC MAP
decoder decoder decoder
e (1) P a (2) e (2) P a (3) y
L (c ) L (u ) L (c ) L (u )
Figure 5.3: Joint source-channel arithmetic coding system using accumulator.
have used this property of accumulator to obtain iteration gain in cascade of stages
comprising of SISO arithmetic decoder. Proposed scheme is described next.
The block diagram of the proposed scheme using rate-1 accumulator (ACC) is
shown in the Figure 5.3. The first two stages are as in the section 5.2.1, with the
difference that binary output of RSCC is scrambled again and applied to rate-1
accumulator. The rate-1 accumulator is simply a RSCC with generator polynomial
(3, 2)8 and with no systematic bits transmitted.
At the receiver noise corrupted version of the code is decoded by soft-out BCJR
decoder (for accumulator) to produce extrinsic information Le (u(3) ). It is then de-
interleaved and applied to RSCC MAP decoder. Extrinsic output of RSCC decoder
Le (u(2) ) is unscrambled and applied as input to SISO arithmetic decoder described
earlier. Extrinsic LLR Le (c(1) ) at the output of arithmetic decoder is applied as
a priori information La (u(2) ) to RSCC MAP decoder. Extrinsic output of RSCC
MAP decoder is Le (c(2) ) and interleaved input to ACC decoder is La (u(3) ). This
process is performed iteratively until convergence is reached.
5.2.3 Performance of Accumulator Aided SISO Decoding of

AC
Simulations were conducted to evaluate the error rate performance of the proposed
technique. In this section, numerical results on packet error rate (PER) are discussed
and compared to the results obtained in [115]. We consider a memoryless binary
source with P (0) = 0.2 and P (1) = 0.8. Each source packet length is of 512
bits, with each packet ending with an EoB symbol. The packets are encoded with
102
100
5 iter, ACC-CC-AC
10 iter, ACC-CC-AC
20 iter, ACC-CC-AC
10 iter, CC-AC
10-1
PER
10-2
10-3
10-4
0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
Eb /N0 (dB)
Figure 5.4: PER performance of the ACC-CC-AC system compared to baseline

CC-AC scheme.
conventional arithmetic encoder. As in [115], encoded bits of 4 such packets are

concatenated and encoded with rate 1/2 RSCC. In contrast to scheme presented
in [115] and described in Section 5.2.1, which use 8-state RSCC, a weaker and simpler
2-state RSCC encoder with generator polynomial (3, 2)8 is applied to compensate for
additional computation incurred at ACC stage. Decoding is done with parameter
q = 4 and = 1.
Figure 5.4 compares the PER of the accumulator-RSCC-AC (ACC-CC-AC)
based proposed scheme with the baseline system (CC-AC) in [115]. PER are plotted
as function of Eb /N0 , where Eb is the energy of a BPSK modulated symbol. It can
be seen that for 10 decoding iterations, ACC-CC-AC scheme performs 1.5 dB better
than the baseline system to achieve a PER of 103 . With more iteration, ACC-
CC-AC scheme performs even better. Simulation results for 5, 10, and 20 iterations
are shown. It should be emphasized that proposed scheme has memory requirement
and computational complexity comparable to the baseline scheme. In our case,
two 2-state convolutional coders are required with total memory requirement of 2
bits, whereas for the system without accumulator, one 8-state convolutional encoder
requires memory of 3 bits. Moreover, complexity of BCJR decoders increase expo-
103
nentially with memory of the code and hence at the decoder side our scheme is less
complex computationally because of using two memory 1 decoders rather than one
memory 3 decoder.
Next the performance of the ACC-CC-AC scheme was evaluated for an SPIHT
coded image transmission system and compared with baseline system. In the consid-
ered system, the Lena test image is compressed using the SPIHT encoder, without
AC stage, generating output of rate RS bpp. SPIHT coded stream was formed into
packets of 512 bits. The source packets are further encoded with proposed scheme
as shown in the Figure 5.3. At the receiver, iterative decoding as described earlier
was applied with Chase decoding parameter q fixed to 4 bits. Simulations were done
to obtain average PSNR over 500 image transmissions for both the cases.
Simulation results are given in the Figure 5.5 and the Figure 5.6 for source bit
rates 0.4 bpp and 1 bpp, respectively. In the figures, PSNR performance of the
ACC-CC-AC based image transmission system is compared to the results obtained
by the CC-AC based baseline system. It can be seen in the Figure 5.5 that at
Eb /N0 of 3.25 dB the proposed ACC-CC-AC system gives a PSNR gain of 10 dB
for RS = 0.4 bpp. On the other hand, for RS = 1.0 bpp, at Eb /N0 of 3.5 dB there is
a gain of 12 dB. All these results were obtained for 5 number of decoding iteration
for both the schemes.

Channel MDC
This section describes a two-channel MDC system based on MDSQ and SPIHT cod-
ing of wavelet trees. Our innovation is to apply source-channel iterative decoding at
the receiver to provide noise robustness. For this purpose, we applied the two iter-
ative decoders (CC-AC and ACC-CC-AC), described in Section 5.2 and compared
the PSNR performance of MDC scheme.
104
36
34
32
Average PSNR (dB)
30
28
26
24
22 ACC-CC-AC
CC-AC
20
1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5 5.5
Eb /N0 (dB)
Figure 5.5: PSNR versus Eb /N0 plot for proposed scheme applied to SPIHT image
coding at RS = 0.4 bpp.
40
38
36
Average PSNR (dB)
34
32
30
28
26
24
22 ACC-CC-AC
CC-AC
20
1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5 5.5
Eb /N0 (dB)
Figure 5.6: PSNR versus Eb /N0 plot for proposed scheme applied to SPIHT image
coding at RS = 1 bpp.
105
SPIHT Coding S1 Arithmetic Channel X1

of Wavelet Trees Coding Encoder
MDSQ
DWT Uniform Scalar
Index
Quantizer
Image Assignment
SPIHT Coding S2 Arithmetic Channel X2
of Wavelet Trees Coding Encoder
Noisy Channel
S1 Iterative Source-
SPIHT
Decoder channel decoder
Error Inverse MDSQ Y1
IDWT Concealment Quantizer Inverse index
Assignment
Reconstructed SPIHT S2 Iterative Source- Y2
image Decoder channel decoder
Figure 5.7: Proposed two channel MDC system with multiple wavelet tree coding.
The proposed image transmission system is shown in the Figure 5.7. The image
is hierarchically decomposed using DWT. The wavelet coefficients are quantized
using uniform scalar quantizer and two descriptions are generated by MDSQ index
assignment. SPIHT coding of wavelet trees is applied to each of the descriptions.
Coding of wavelet trees [209] is different from usual SPIHT in the sense that each
spatial orientation tree in the wavelet domain is individually encoded using SPIHT.
For example, if there are T wavelet trees in each description, there will be T SPIHT
coded bit-streams and they can be independently decoded. All T SPIHT coded
streams are appended with 16-bit CRC to detect any error. This allows SPIHT
decoding of received bit-streams, only if, they are received error-free. Wavelet tree
coding will be explained in next section. Each SPIHT coded spatial orientation
tree is further compressed with AC. AC coded bit-streams are channel coded using
RSCC and accumulator (ACC-CC-AC scheme in Section 5.2.2). Coded bits are
transmitted over AWGN channels after BPSK modulation.
The receiver iteratively decodes T ACC-CC-AC coded bit-streams from each
description. It is assumed that there is no loss of packet in the channel and syn-
chronization is perfect at the receiver. Decoding of ACC-CC-AC coded bit-streams
was described earlier in Section 5.2.2. Next the decoded bit-streams are checked for
106
errors and only streams which satisfy CRC are allowed for SPIHT decoding stage.
Error detection is essential at this stage because of progressive nature of SPIHT
coded bit-stream. Any bit error encountered at the beginning of the bit-stream will
significantly distort the image. After SPIHT decoding of error-free bits-treams, we
may encounter three scenarios at this stage:
1. Quantization index for wavelet tree order of both the descriptions are recov-
ered.
2. Quantization index for wavelet tree order of only one description is recovered.
3. Quantization index for wavelet tree order of none of the descriptions are re-
covered.
For Case 1 and 2, inverse MDSQ is applied to available quantized index from one or
both descriptions to obtain a single field of quantization index. Estimate of actual
value of wavelet coefficients are obtained by application of inverse quantization on
recovered quantization index. For case 3, when both the descriptions are erroneous,
a complete wavelet tree is lost and error concealment [64] needs to be carried out.
It is well known that in the lowest frequency subbands, wavelet coefficients are
correlated to the neighboring coefficients. On the other hand, this is not true for
higher frequency subbands. Therefore, error concealment for wavelet coefficients
is carried out in lowest frequency subband only. A single wavelet tree in SPIHT
has four coefficients in the lowest frequency subband. For a missing block, each
of the four missing coefficients will be replaced by the average of its neighboring
coefficients. For higher frequency subbands, coefficients are simply set equal to
zero for lost data blocks. Finally, inverse discrete wavelet transform is applied to
reconstruct the received image.
Multiple Wavelet Tree Coding
After the generation of two balanced descriptions by MDSQ, multiple wavelet tree
coding is applied to produce multiple bit-streams to enhance error resilience capa-
bility of the descriptions. Figure 5.8(a) shows the spatial orientation tree structure
107
(a) (b)
Figure 5.8: Wavelet tree in a 3 level DWT and its corresponding image content.
of Said and Pearlman [71]. This structure defines the spatial relationship of wavelet
coefficients in a hierarchical pyramid. The wavelet tree is rooted at the lowest fre-
quency subband. Each node in the tree has either four offspring or no descendant
at all. The offspring are grouped in a 2 2 adjacent coefficients. Its descendants
correspond to the pixels of same spatial orientation in next finer level of pyramid. If
all the coefficients in a tree are grouped together, they form a square block of image
as shown in the Figure 5.8(b). They are frequency components for a specific image
area with the same block size at the corresponding position.
For each wavelet tree, SPIHT algorithm was applied to encode them indepen-
dently. Independent coding of wavelet trees has the advantage that any error in one
SPIHT coded stream does not impact other SPIHT coded bit-streams. Thus, error
resilient capability of a description is increased with increase in number of wavelet
trees, with little decrease in coding efficiency.
5.3.2 Performance of Iterative Source-Channel Decoding of

Two Channel MDC
Experiments were conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme for
transmission of gray-scale image. It was demonstrated that PSNR performance of
MDC can be improved by utilizing soft output of AWGN channel and by employing
108
SISO arithmetic decoder. Simulations were performed for both high redundancy, 2
diagonal (D = 2) index assignment and lower redundancy, 3 diagonal (D = 3) index
assignments. We assume that both the descriptions are transmitted through AWGN
channel are decoded at a central decoder.
In the considered system, test image was decomposed by 9-7 wavelet filters and
number of decomposition levels was set to four. Quantization was performed with
stepsize uniformly throughout resolution levels. Two image descriptions were
obtained by applying MDSQ index assignment on the quantization indices. SPIHT
coding was applied to each of the descriptions until bit-layer 0 to get integer level
accuracy. was selected such that bit rate per description is 0.5 bpp. With four
levels of decomposition and each wavelet tree being rooted in a 2 2 pixel block
in lowest subband, number of wavelet trees in a description is 256. Each SPIHT
coded wavelet tree was appended with 16-bit CRC and an EoB symbol. The size
of a description after SPIHT coding is given in Table 5.1. Since number of wavelet
trees are fixed and 16-bit CRC is appended to each stream, CRC bytes increase the
size of a description by 3.1 % only. Each stream was compressed using AC and four
such streams are formed into a transmission frame. Size of description after AC
and percentage reduction is also shown in Table 5.1 for different test images. Thus,
in the proposed scheme, data bytes increase due to CRC had been compensated
by reduction due to AC. Finally, data frames were encoded with RSCC and rate-1
accumulator, as described in Section 5.2.2.
Table 5.1: Description size after addition of CRC bytes and reduction due to AC.
D=2 D=3
Test Description CRC Size after Reduction Size after Reduction

image size (bytes) % AC (bytes) after AC (%) AC (bytes) after AC (%)
Lena 14033 14.3 13573 17.2
Baboon 16384 3.1 14110 13.9 13607 16.9
Barbara 14284 12.8 14029 14.4
For comparison, a similar scheme is being considered, but without accumulator

block. In such a system, channel coding and decoding is performed by iterative
109
decoding between AC and RSCC (CC-AC scheme in Section 5.2.1) for both the
received descriptions. This scheme was designated as CC-AC in the figures next.
To evaluate the contribution of AC in iterative decoding, another baseline scheme
was considered (labeled as Baseline in the figures) which did not use AC and hence
no iterative decoding was performed between AC and RSCC. For fair comparison,
description size after SPIHT coding was kept same for all the schemes.
Since, compression performance of the three test images do not differ signifi-
cantly, we considered Lena image for subsequent simulations. PSNR performance of
the three schemes for 2 diagonal and 3 diagonal MDSQ were obtained and is shown in
the Figure 5.9 and the Figure 5.10, respectively. For 2 diagonal case, ACC-CC-AC,
CC-AC and baseline schemes achieve maximum PSNR of 35.6 dB at channel Eb /N0
of 2.75 dB, 3.75 dB and 5 dB, respectively. The proposed ACC-CC-AC scheme
provides a gain of 1 dB over CC-AC scheme and 2.25 dB over baseline scheme in
terms of Eb /N0 . For D = 3, the maximum average PSNR is obtained at channel
SNR of 2.75 dB, 4 dB, and 5.25 dB respectively. Here, the gain of ACC-CC-AC
scheme over CC-AC scheme is 1.25 dB and over baseline scheme is 2.5 dB. Thus,
ACC-CC-AC outperforms both the reference schemes and requires significantly less
transmit power.
The baseline scheme achieves maximum PSNR at Eb /N0 = 5 dB for D=2 and
at Eb /N0 = 5.25 dB for D=3. Three diagonal MDSQ requires 0.25 dB more power
compared to two diagonal MDSQ and can be attributed to lower redundancy of
three diagonal MDSQ. This is not the case with ACC-CC-AC scheme which achieves
maximum PSNR at Eb /N0 = 2.75 dB for both D=2 and D=3.

Channel MDC with EREC-ST
Song et al. [64] proposed an integrated robust MDC scheme for compressed still
image over error prone channel with packet loss and random bit errors. In this
scheme, multiple descriptions are generated by MDSQ. Multiple bitstreams are then
generated based on wavelet trees along spatial orientations to achieve improved error
110
40
35
Average PSNR (dB)
30
25
20
ACC-CC-AC
15 CC-AC
Baseline
2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5 5.5

Eb /N0 (dB)
Figure 5.9: PSNR performance of the proposed scheme (D = 2) with SPIHT coding
of multiple wavelet trees.
40
35
Mean PSNR (dB)
30
25
20
15 ACC-CC-AC
CC-AC
Baseline
10
1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5 5.5
Eb /N0 (dB)
Figure 5.10: PSNR performance of the proposed scheme (D = 3) with SPIHT coding
of multiple wavelet trees .
111
resilience capability for each description. The spatial orientation trees in the wavelet
domain are individually encoded using SPIHT. Since, all these SPIHT coded bit-
streams are of different lengths, to maintain robust synchronization, authors in [64]
adopted error resilient entropy coding (EREC) [95] to reorganize these variable
length bit-streams into fixed length data slot before multiplexing and transmission.
Error concealment is applied at the receiver to alleviate image degradation due to
loss of both descriptions of a wavelet tree.
In this research, our contribution lies in improving the scheme of Song et al. by
adopting Chase-type SISO arithmetic decoder for decoding of multiple descriptions
transmitted over additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and packet loss channels.
Existing schemes in literature suppose the transmission media to be random bit
error and packet loss channel. This assumption is not necessarily suitable for many
binary-input continuous output channels (e.g. AWGN channel), where soft deci-
sion output of channel decoder can be utilized by the source decoder for further
improving the PSNR performance. In the proposed scheme, SPIHT coded bit-
streams are arithmetic coded to further increase compression efficiency and use of
soft channel information at the receiver improves the noise robustness of the arith-
metic decoder. Combining EREC with iterative source-channel decoding of AC is
not quite straightforward as EREC requires instantaneous hard decision decoding
of the source symbols. Our innovation lies in applying EREC assisted by state and
tail bits (EREC-ST) [191] with arithmetic coded SPIHT trees of variable lengths
for SISO decoding of AC. This enables iterative source-channel decoding of EREC
coded fixed length slots at the receiver and improve PSNR gain significantly.
The proposed system is shown in the Figure 5.11. This scheme is in continuation
of the MDC scheme presented in Section 5.3, except EREC encoding and decoding
stage. In this design, EREC encoder and decoder blocks are replaced by EREC-ST
blocks to create equal length packet from variable length SPIHT coded bitstreams.
Two balanced descriptions are obtained by performing MDSQ after decompos-
ing the given image hierarchically using discrete wavelet transform. Coefficients of
112
SPIHT ERECST RSCC

Append Arithmetic Packet X
I1 Coding of Coding & Encoder 1
CRC Coding Network at WAP
Wavelet Trees
S1 A1 packetization
DWT MDSQ
Image RSCC X2
SPIHT ERECST
I2 Append Arithmetic Coding & Packet Encoder
Coding of
CRC Coding packetization Network at WAP
Wavelet Trees A2
S2
S1 A1
I1 SPIHT Verify Iterative Source-
Decoder CRC channel decoder
Conceal Inverse Y1
Inverse
IDWT Errors Quantizer MDSQ S2 A2
Reconstructed SPIHT Verify Iterative Source-
image I2
Decoder CRC channel decoder
Y2
Figure 5.11: Block diagram of proposed two-channel MDC scheme utilizing iterative
source-channel decoding and EREC-ST.
wavelet trees along spatial orientation in each descriptions are partitioned and each
partition is SPIHT coded independently. CRC parity bits are generated for prede-
fined fixed length of each SPIHT coded bitstream, and then AC is applied to each
independent bitstream for further compression. The variable length AC are reor-
ganized into fixed length slots using EREC-ST for synchronization requirements.
EREC-ST is a recently developed variation of EREC in which start (S) and tail (T)
information of variable length bitstream are encoded separately. Conversion to fixed
length slots is required to form uniform sized packets before transmitting over packet
switching network. At the output of the packet loss channel, remaining available
packets are coded using RSCC at wireless access points (WAP) and transmitted.
The receiver decodes the packets received through the wireless channel and re-
constructs the image by combining both the descriptions. Log-likelihood ratio (LLR)
value at the input is computed from the received signal as i = 2yi / 2 , where yi is
the noisy symbol output of AWGN channel with noise variance 2 . This LLR value
is utilized by source-channel decoder for iterative soft decoding of AC and RSCC.
Successfully recovered SPIHT coded bitstream are decoded and wavelet trees are
combined to obtain the image in wavelet domain. Finally reconstructed image is
obtained by inverse discrete wavelet transform. Function of individual blocks are
113
described next.
DWT and MDSQ
Image is first hierarchically decomposed into N level DWT. The number of levels
N is chosen depending on the required number of wavelet trees with the coefficients
rooted in the lowest frequency subband. MDSQ on DWT coefficients produce two
complementary and possibly redundant index pair fields (2-D matrix for each de-
scription) I1 and I2 . Similar to earlier section, we consider two and three diagonal
index assignment method for MDSQ.
SPIHT Coding of Wavelet Trees
The quantized DWT coefficient matrix Ij , j 1, 2 is divided into K groups and then
each of these groups are independently SPIHT coded so that K separate embedded
bitstreams for each description are created. Each group consists of four spatial
orientation trees with each wavelet tree rooted at the lowest frequency subband.
Nodes of the tree have either no descendents or four offspring grouped in 2 2
adjacent coefficients. SPIHT algorithm is employed to encode independently i-
th group of coefficients in description j and generate variable length bitstreams
Sij , i = 1, ..., K, j 1, 2. Since each description is consists of matrix of integer
valued quantization indices, SPIHT coding is done on each group of trees until
bit-layer 0 to obtain integer level accuracy.
CRC and AC
After SPIHT coding of wavelet trees along spatial orientation for each description,
4-bit CRC is attached to each of the K SPIHT coded bitstreams. Following [64],
CRC of 4 bit length was used so as to avoid unnecessary coding overhead. Since,
all the bitstreams are of different length and their embedded nature (bits in the
beginning of the bitstream are more important than at the end), CRC is generated
and appended for the first l bits (l = 128 bits) in each bitstream. CRC check
eliminates erroneous wavelet trees from consideration which may have significant
impact on the PSNR of the reconstructed image. Arithmetic encoder then maps
114
each of the K bitstreams independently into binary strings Aji , i = 1, ..., K for
description j 1, 2.
5.4.2 EREC-ST and Packet formation
If variable length blocks (VLB) are transmitted consecutively, the resulting system
can be severely effected by bit errors because of loss of synchronization. One ap-
proach is to append synchronization code to provide resynchronization at the cost
of extra added bits. Otherwise, presence of a single error in the AC may cause
catastrophic decoding failure. Another approach for error robust transmission of
variable length codes is the method of EREC, which converts K VLBs into K fixed
length slots (FLS).
Decoding EREC in iterative source-channel receiver is challenging because to
detect the end of each VLB in the FLS, the VLB subdecoder (i.e. SISO arithmetic
decoder in our case) must be embedded into the EREC decoder and decision of end
of block be made based on some hard decision. Since, at the receiver EREC decoder
lies in the iterative loop between source and channel decoder, finding end of block
based on soft decision is difficult. This can be solved by applying EREC-ST to the
problem at hand. EREC-ST isolates pure EREC subdecoder from the effects of
VLB subdecoder by coding VLB lengths as side information (SI). Let L be the total
number of bits in K VLBs in a description and si is the length of i-th FLS, where,

dL/Ke for 0 i < mod(L, K)
si = (5.4.2)
bL/Kc for mod(L, K) i < K.
The encoding process consists of K stages. Each stage consists of filling up of

FLS and coding of VLB lengths by emission of state and tail bits. As an example,
the Figure 5.12 shows the sequence of steps to convert four VLBs to four FLSs. At
stage 0 (Figure 5.12(a)), as many bits as possible are placed into corresponding FLS.
At stage n, i-th VLB, (VLB(i) has bi remaining bits) searches m-th FLS (sm slots
left in FLS(m)), where m = mod (i + (n), K) and (n) is a predefined integer
sequence of length K. If both VLB(i) has bits remaining and FLS(m) has blank
slots, as many remaining bits of VLB(i) as possible are placed in FLS(m). At each
stage, one state bit S is emitted, S = 1 if bi > sm , else S = 0 and dlog2 sm e tail bits
115
Figure 5.12: Figure shows four variable length blocks VLB(0), VLB(1), VLB(2) and
VLB(3) being rearranged into fixed length slots FLS(0-3)with EREC/EREC-ST
algorithm.
are output to code sm bi in binary. Let t = min (sm , bi ). Remaining bits and slots
are recalculated as bi = bi t and sm = sm t. In the Figure 5.12(b), after stage
0, only FLS(1) has bits left to be placed and searches FLS(2). Two bits are placed
in FLS(2). Since, no other VLB contains unplaced bits, the process moves to next
stage. In stage 2, VLB(1) places remaining three bits in FLS(3), as shown in the
Figure 5.12(d). The FLS are formed into packets and transmitted over network.
Table 5.2 shows the ST (state and tail bits) generated for this example. The
ST bits associated with a FLS are taken as a whole (SVLB) and EREC is applied
to reorganize all SVLB into fixed length slots called SFLS. If b is the average VLB
length, it was proved in [191] that fraction of ST bits per VLB is (2 + dlog2 be)/b,
which in this research is 2.7 percent. Thus, it can be safely assumed that ST bits are
transmitted with higher error protection with little coding overhead and received
error free.
Table 5.2: State and tail bits after different stages in the Figure 5.12.
n=0 n=1 n=2 SVLB SFLS
FLS(0) 0.00 000 0000
FLS(1) 1 1 1001
FLS(2) 0.10 1 0101 010-
FLS(3) 0.11 0.00 011000 011-
116
Figure 5.13: (a) Four sseg linked list generated by SVLB Reconstructor subroutine
in the process of EREC-ST decoding of FLS created in Figure 3. (b) Four bseg
linked list generated by function VLB Reconstructor, where bseg i corresponds to
VLB(i).
SFLS is utilized at the receiver side to recover variable length bitstreams back
from FLS. This is done in two stages, consisting of subroutines SVLB reconstructor
and VLB reconstructor. Refer to [191] for detailed algorithms for these two func-
tions. SVLB reconstructor outputs data structure sseg m = s, next, where s is the
number of blank bits after the current segment of FLS(m), and next points to the
next segment of FLS(m). If no more sseg is associated with current FLS, a null is
put in next field. The Figure 5.13(a) shows sseg for the four FLS formed in the
Figure 5.12. Zero in s field of sseg 0 indicates that no slots are left blank in FLS(0)
after the current segment. For sseg 1, s = 1 indicates that current VLB fills up
FLS(1) completely with some bits are remaining to be placed in other FLS. FLS(2)
contains data segment from two different VLBs as shown by two sseg. After first
segment, two bit positions are left vacant and next in sseg 2 points to next sseg.
In the similar way sseg information is generated for FLS(3).
With the aid of sseg information, VLB reconstructor algorithm rearranges bits
in FLS to original variable length bitstreams. VLB reconstructor creates a data
structure called bseg i = {m, s, s0 , next} associated with each VLB(i), where s
and s0 is the number of blank bits in FLS(m) before and after current segment
of VLB(i). The Figure 5.13(b) shows the content of bseg structure for the given
117
example. At the beginning it is assumed that all the VLBs at the receiver are empty
and are waiting to get bits from the FLS. VLB(0) is reconstructed with the aid of
information in bseg 0, where bits are obtained from 0-th FLS. Number of bits left
in FLS(0) is four (s = 4) before recovering the VLB segment. Since, after current
segment number of bits left is zero (s0 = 0 ), all the bits of the FLS(0) is taken up to
form VLB(0). VLB(0) gets not more bits from any FLS because next field in bseg 0
is null. VLB(1) obtains four bits from FLS(1), two bits from FLS(2) and three bits
from FLS(3) as indicated by bseg 1 in the Figure 5.13(b). Similarly, VLB(2) and
VLB(3) is reconstructed. One distinctive feature of VLB reconstructor algorithm is
that can be observed from this example is that underlying variable length code (i.e.
VLB) need not be decoded to recover VLBs back from FLS as was required with
EREC.
Channel Coding and Transmission
Wireless access points (WAP) constitute the last-hop delivery link to the end user.
Those packets which are not dropped in the network reach the WAP. These packets
are encoded with eight state rate 1/2 RSCC and transmitted over wireless channel.
The end user is able to able to receive packets from one or more WAPs. We assume
that reception is done through two different chain of antenna and receivers (as the
number of descriptions) and combined at last stage.
Iterative Source-Channel Decoding
In this block, channel code (RSCC) and source code (arithmetic code) are decoded
iteratively as described in Section 5.2.1, but with the constraint of fixed length
packets. Iterative decoding allows source codec to be more robust to residual channel
errors. Also, channel decoder can utilize any residual redundancy of AC in the
process of decoding. The proposed iterative decoder is shown in the Figure 5.14.
We assume that input signal at the BCJR decoder Y = [y1 , ..., yi , ...] is obtained as
y i = xi + w i (5.4.3)
118
sseg
a
A Chase-like L Packet RSCC
FLS to +
arithmetic VLB sequence + Decoder
e Y
decoder to FLS G _ (BCJR)
a
G
VLB to FLS to
FLS packet
L
e (EREC) sequence
EREC-ST
Figure 5.14: Detailed exposition of iterative source-channel decoder block in the

Figure 5.11.
where, wi is Gaussian distributed random noise with variance 2 and xi is the

transmitted symbol. BCJR MAP decoder accepts channel LLR values, i = 2yi / 2
for decoding RSCC.
Let e be the extrinsic LLR calculated by subtracting a priori input from the
output of BCJR decoder. The extrinsic information e is in the form of packets
and if the packet has been lost (did not arrive at the receiver), its LLR value is
assumed to be zero. The FLS (formed from e ) need to be converted to VLB
for arithmetic decoding. The main challenge, as discussed in earlier section, is to
rearrange (EREC decoded) soft information FLSs to array of (LLR values of AC)
VLB blocks a = [a1 , , ak , ..., aK ], where k-th VLB block ak is an array of LLR
values of AC. Converting fixed length slots (FLS) formed from soft information into
VLB using conventional EREC is not possible in the absence of any side information.
Hard thresholding of soft FLS values to decode EREC is not useful since decoded
bits are unreliable during initial iterations.
Each VLB (ak ) is now decoded by Chase-like SISO arithmetic decoder. After
an iteration Chase-like arithmetic decoder outputs VLBs of extrinsic LLR e =
[e1 , ..., ek , ..., eK ], where ek = [ek1 , ..., ekL ]. The e is again reorganized into fixed
length blocks using EREC and applied as a priori information a to the BCJR
decoder. After certain fixed number of iterations, let A is obtained as the output of
the arithmetic decoder.
119
Merging of Multiple Descriptions
The K variable length bitstreams in A are checked for CRC. In case of check failure,
corresponding wavelet tree is marked lost and is not utilized for further reconstruc-
tion. After SPIHT decoding of both descriptions, wavelet coefficients obtained are
obtained as I1 and I2 . If wavelet tree order of both descriptions (corresponding to
row and column index) arrive at the receiver without being lost, decoding is per-
formed by simple matrix lookup to get the central quantization index. However, if
some of the wavelet trees of either description are corrupted or lost, central decoding
can not be performed correctly by matrix lookup. In such cases, available bitstream
from either description is used to perform inverse index assignment using single
channel inverse quantizer. Thus, at the receiver, a wavelet tree can be declared lost
in three scenarios:
1. A packet (or FLS) is lost in network and all the VLB associated with it are
declared lost.
2. No valid AC is found for the VLB in the source-channel decoder stage.
3. Bitstream obtained after arithmetic decoding, fails in CRC.
When both descriptions of same wavelet tree are lost, error concealment in wavelet
domain as described earlier is applied.
5.4.3 Performance of Iterative Source-Channel Decoding of

Two Channel MDC with EREC-ST
A Grey scale Lena image of size 512 512 is used for evaluating the performance
of proposed algorithm under following channel conditions: (i) AWGN channel with
no packet loss, and (ii) combined packet loss and AWGN channel. The given image
is hierarchically decomposed by 4-scale discrete wavelet transform, and then the
subband coefficients are quantized with uniform scalar quantizer of step-size . For
MDSQ, two types of index assignments are being considered, with number of diag-
onals D = 2 and D = 3, to form two descriptions. For each description, 256 wavelet
trees are constructed and SPIHT coded to generate 256 bitstreams. was adjusted
120
to obtain coding rate of 0.5 bpp/description after SPIHT coding. 4-bit CRC was
generated using generator polynomial x4 + x3 + x2 + x for the first 128 bits of a
bitstream and appended to it. This results in mere 0.78 percent overhead in each
description and is compensated by AC. All the bitstreams are independently arith-
metic coded for further compression, formed into FLS using EREC-ST. Proposed
scheme is more compression efficient compared to the MDC scheme of [64] as there
is no arithmetic coding performed in the later scheme. Data packets were formed
by packing eight slots and transmitted over packet network. Packets arriving at the
WAP are encoded with 8-state RSCC with generator polynomial (Gr , G) = (17, 15)8 .
In the simulation results discussed next, three schemes are compared. As base-
line, we consider scheme of Song et al. [64] with 256 bitstreams per description,
which is compared to the proposed scheme using EREC-ST and iterative soft de-
cision decoding of AC. To investigate the gain provided by iterative decoding, we
also compare with a similar scheme utilizing EREC-ST, but with conventional hard
decision decoding of AC. We first consider transmission over AWGN channel with-
out any packet drop. Figure 5.15 and Figure 5.16 shows the performance of the
proposed system for 2 diagonal and 3 diagonal index assignments, respectively. The
results are obtained by averaging 100 trials for each channel condition.
In the Figure 5.15, PSNR performance is compared for MDC schemes utilizing
2-diagonal index assignment. For hard decision decoding of AC aided by EREC-ST
(without soft iterative decoding), we can observe 1.5 dB improvement in average
PSNR at Eb /N0 of 3.5 dB compared to baseline scheme. With iterative decoding
remarkable improvement is observed in PSNR performance. After 1 iteration of soft
decoding of AC, there is a maximum gain in PSNR of 3.5 dB at Eb /N0 of 3.5 dB.
The maximum improvement after 4 iterations is 7 dB, which is observed at relatively
noisy SNR region of Eb /N0 = 3 dB. Proposed scheme, after four iterations, achieves
maximum PSNR of 35.6 dB at Eb /N0 of 3.5 dB. The baseline scheme achieves this
maximum value at Eb /N0 of 5 dB; thus, requiring 1.5 dB more signal power to
achieve same PSNR performance.
The Figure 5.16 compares the PSNR performance for the case of 3-diagonal in-
dex assignment. Compared to baseline scheme, proposed scheme with hard decision
121
decoder (hard decoder with EREC-ST) achieves maximum PSNR gain of 1.25 dB
at Eb /N0 of 3 dB. With four iterations of soft-decision decoding, this gain increases
by 6 dB. For four iterations of the proposed scheme, maximum PSNR of 36 dB is
obtained at channel Eb /N0 of 4 dB. The baseline scheme achieves this maximum
value at Eb /N0 of 5.5 dB; thus, requiring 1.5 dB more signal power to achieve same
PSNR performance. In the Figure 5.17, we give examples of reconstructed images in
order to illustrate the improvement in visual quality. It shows improvement in im-
age quality with the proposed decoder (Figure 5.17(a)) compared to baseline scheme
(Figure 5.17(b)) at Eb /N0 of 3 dB. These results demonstrate that the proposed im-
provement in MDC scheme makes it significantly noise robust compared to existing
schemes in literature.
Second set of simulations were carried out to demonstrate the performance of
our proposed scheme over channels with both packet loss and random noise. The
objective is to evaluate the degradation of PSNR value for different number of packet
lost. We conduct experiments with the proposed system only as its superiority
compared to baseline system has been demonstrated in the earlier set of simulations.
The results for different wireless channel conditions are shown in the Figure 5.18 for
D = 2 and the Figure 5.19 for D = 3.
It is evident from the figures that proposed scheme is able to achieve graceful
degradation of image quality as more and more packets are lost in packet network.
The degradation is more evident in high Eb /N0 region (> 3 dB) whereas, there is
smaller effect of packet loss in low Eb /N0 region. These results demonstrate excellent
capability of the presented system to combat packet loss and noisy channel via
integrated design.
5.5 Conclusion
In Section 5.2, an accumulator based source-channel decoding scheme has been pro-
posed for transmission of arithmetic code over noisy channel. The proposed scheme
consisting of cascade of unity rate accumulator, two state RSCC and arithmetic
encoder has been compared with a similar system consisting of eight state RSCC
122
38
36
34
Average PSNR
32
30
28
SISO w/ ERECST 4 iter.

26 SISO w/ ERECST 1 iter.
Hard dec. w/ ERECST
Baseline scheme
24
2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
Eb /N0 (dB)
Figure 5.15: Performance comparison of proposed scheme for transmission over

AWGN channel (with no packet loss) for 2 diagonal index assignment case (D = 2).
38
36
34
Average PSNR
32
30
28
26 Hard dec. w/ ERECST
Baseline scheme
2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5 5.5

Eb /N0 (dB)
Figure 5.16: Performance of proposed scheme for transmission over AWGN channel
(with no packet loss) for D = 3.
123
Figure 5.17: Image recovered by proposed scheme (a) compared with recovery by
baseline system (b) at Eb /N0 of 3 dB and D = 3. PSNR of images (a) and (b) are
33.6 dB and 27 dB, respectively.
and arithmetic encoder. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme performs
better in terms of packet error rate for same overall code rate and decoding iterations
compared to the baseline system. Also because of reduction in number of states in
BCJR decoder, encoding and decoding complexity is reduced, even though there is
an extra accumulator stage.
In Section 5.3, iterative source-channel decoding techniques described in Section
5.2 has been applied for transmission of two-channel MDSQ based MDC over noisy
channel. Proposed scheme utilize low-complexity Chase-type SISO arithmetic de-
coder to improve the performance of MDC in the presence of noise. This results
in efficient utilization of soft information at the output of noisy channel and hence,
achieve noise-robustness. There is no significant increase in complexity at the en-
coder because arithmetic coder is a part of many bit plane coders like SPIHT and
EBCOT in JPEG 2000. At the decoder side, an iterative source-channel decoder
is employed which use SISO arithmetic decoder for decoding of descriptions. With
simulations, it has been demonstrated that proposed scheme performs better in
terms of decoded image PSNR compared to baseline scheme.
In Section 5.4, developed iterative decoding scheme has been extended to hybrid
124
36
4.0 dB
34 3.5 dB
3.0 dB
2.5 dB
32
Average PSNR (dB)
30
28
26
24
22
20
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Total packets lost
Figure 5.18: Performance of proposed scheme (D = 2) for transmission over packet

loss channel at different values of Eb /N0 for wireless channel.
36
4.0 dB
3.5 dB
34 3.0 dB
2.5 dB
32
Average PSNR (dB)
30
28
26
24
22
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Total packets lost
Figure 5.19: Performance of proposed scheme (D = 3) for transmission over packet

loss channel at different values of Eb /N0 .
125
channel consisting of combined packet loss channel and AWGN channel. Multiple
descriptions are obtained by applying two-channel MDSQ on image decomposed by
2-D discrete wavelet transform. The resulting descriptions are SPIHT and arith-
metic coded to further increase compression efficiency. Receiver for each description
consist of SISO decoder for variable length arithmetic codes, which exchange ex-
trinsic information with SISO RSCC decoder with the aid of EREC-ST algorithm.
Simulation results demonstrate considerable improvement of performance by the
proposed schemes over existing scheme in literature.
******
Chapter 6
Iterative Decoding of
Network-Channel Codes
Cooperative communication using relay nodes is one of the most effective means
of exploiting space diversity for low cost nodes in wireless network. In cooperative
communication, besides communicating their own information, users also relay the
information of other users. In this chapter we investigate two schemes where coop-
eration is achieved using a common relay node which performs network coding. Its
objective is to provide space diversity for two information nodes transmitting to a
base station.
The proposed schemes use Reed-Solomon error correcting code for encoding the
information at the user nodes and punctured convolutional code as network code,
instead of XOR based network coding. In the first scheme, network coding is ap-
plied in multiple-access relay channel (MARC) scenario and source nodes do not
communicate with each other directly. In the second scheme, both the source nodes
exchange information and together form virtual antenna array for space-time coded
cooperation, in addition to network coded cooperation. We propose iterative soft de-
coding of joint network-channel code by treating it as a concatenated Reed-Solomon
convolutional code.
126
127
6.1 Introduction
The increasing popularity of ubiquitous computing has motivated the deployment
of wireless communication devices that require ad hoc communication. One such
application of pervasive computing is in wireless sensor networks (WSN), which is
used to monitor the physical world parameters like temperature, radiation levels,
image, video etc. The WSN consists of large number of low cost wireless sensor
nodes and each node itself has very limited computational capability. The nodes
are further constrained by limited power of transmitters. The main challenge of
wireless sensor networks is to achieve proper balance between transmit/processing
power and quality of service. However, such multi-terminal systems are limited by
impairments due to wireless channels, such as fading, and interference.
Spatial diversity has been accepted as one of the most effective ways to combat
fading over wireless channels. This has inspired extensive research on multiple-
input-multiple-output (MIMO) over the past decade [153]. However, achieving full
diversity gain requires multiple antennas to be placed sufficiently apart, which may
be difficult for small mobile terminals. Because of these practical limits, alternate
approaches, such as relaying, distributed antenna system (DAS) and user coopera-
tive transmission [129] have been proposed to provide spatial diversity. There are
many cooperative strategies to achieve efficient node cooperation, such as amplify
and forward [136], decode and forward [210], and coded cooperation [116,211]. Based
on these basic schemes, various other improvements have been proposed in recent
years.
The idea of network coding was first proposed by Ahlswede et al. [152] to enhance
the capacity of the noiseless wired network. The core idea of network coding is to
allow simple coding capability at relaying nodes, in exchange for network capacity
gain. It has been shown that considerable capacity gain can be obtained as such
over wired communication links [152]. This pioneering idea has inspired considerable
research efforts in communication and computer networking communities. Although
the noiseless assumption used in [152] is no longer valid in wireless communication,
the wireless medium does provide some desirable characteristics that facilitate the
application of network coding, e.g., broadcasting without additional cost [153].
128
S1 S1
x x
RN 1 BS BS
x y
RN 2 +RN
y y
S2 S2
(a) (b)
Figure 6.1: The uplink for two mobile stations (S1 and S2 ) with cooperative diversity.
(a) Diversity obtained by simple relaying, (b) Network coded diversity.
In a simple configuration (Figure 6.1(a)), where we want to create space diversity,

each user node (Si , i = 1, 2) is coupled with one additional relay node (RNi ). The
relay decodes incoming signal from the user and forwards it to the base station.
In addition to this relayed signal, the base station also receives the original signal
through the direct path. It is assumed that transmission from source and relay
nodes are through orthogonal channels and experience independent fading.
In a MARC scenario, two or more relays are replaced with a single relay node,
i.e. one relay node serves many source nodes. Though, such a relaying scheme may
reduce the number of relay nodes, it is inefficient because the users need to compete
by queueing for the relay. Thus, compared to the Figure 6.1(a), such a system
requires twice the bandwidth.
In contrast, relay node in the Figure 6.1(b) performs network coding on the
information received from S1 and S2 and transmits to BS. Each of user S1 and user
S2 has its own data, x and y, to send to the base station. Due to the broadcast nature
of the wireless medium, RN will receive signals x and y, and relays these signals
simultaneously to the base station. Specially, if linear network coding is used at RN,
then instead of relaying for only x or y, RN can assist both terminals simultaneously
by transmitting xy. With only one assisting relay RN, the information transmitted
from both S1 and S2 can now be retrieved correctly, even if the direct uplink of user
S1 or user S2 fails. For example, if the base station fails to decode x, yet y and x y
both arrive correctly, then the base station can recover x as x = y (x y). It was
shown in [153] that both schemes in the Figure 6.1 achieve a diversity order of 2;
however, scheme with network coding does so with lower complexity and spectrum
129
cost.
Focus of our research is MARC, where two user nodes obtain cooperation through
a fixed relay node performing network coding. This system has advantage of diver-
sity gain, as well as increase in system throughput. The benefit of network coding in
MARC schemes has been demonstrated in literature. Authors in [161,162] proposed
schemes which combines the benefits of space-time codes and network coding for
cooperative communication. The authors use simple XOR based network coding at
the relay for obtaining diversity. Du et al. [212] investigated a cooperative strategy
based on parity check network coding. Their study revealed that a successful design
should employ the most effective extra check bits to make full use of information
in relayed bits to help decode the message from two users. Wei Fang et al. [191]
proposed a joint network-channel coding scheme based on distributed turbo code for
multiple-access relay channel, using decode-and-forward protocol. The problem of
transmitting correlated binary sources over MARC was considered in [213], where a
joint source-channel-network decoding technique was proposed to fully exploit the
correlation between sources.
In this research, we consider joint network-channel coding for MARC when the
transmitting node employs RS code error correcting code and punctured recursive
systematic convolutional code (RSCC) is used as network code. Encoding user in-
formation with RS code, in contrast to simply encoding with linear block code [173],
is more relevant because of widespread prevalence of RS code in many existing stan-
dards. Our main contribution is application of iterative soft decision decoding in
the context of network-channel decoding in MARC setup. The proposed algorithm
enables network code and channel decoders to exchange soft information iteratively
and to achieve an improved performance compared to a hard decision iterative de-
coder. The convergence behaviour of the network-channel decoder is analyzed using
EXIT (extrinsic information transfer) chart and we also compare the computational
complexity of the proposed algorithm. We demonstrate using bit error rate (BER)
simulations that the proposed scheme performs better compared to existing design
proposed in [173] and conventional XOR based network coding.
In later part of the chapter, we enhance the bit error rate performance of a dis-
130
tributed space-time coded system aided by a relay which performs network coding.
We improve upon the research in [162], which uses simple XOR based network code,
by application of the concept of product code and iterative network-channel decod-
ing. The proposed scheme uses punctured RSCC as network code at the relay and
RS code as channel code. Our main innovation is iterative network-channel decod-
ing at the receiver using the principles derived from soft decoding of concatenated
RS-convolutional codes [185].
Rest of the chapter is organized as follows. In Section 6.2, proposed iterative
network-channel decoding scheme for MARC is presented. In Section 6.3, a iterative
network-channel scheme is presented in which source nodes cooperate with each
other using Alamouti space-time block code, in addition to network coding at the
relay. Finally, Section 6.4 is conclusion.
6.2 Iterative Network-Channel Decoding in MARC
6.2.1 System Model and Coding Strategy
We consider the scenario shown in the Figure 6.2, with two mobile user nodes
communicating information to a common base station in a MARC setup. Basically,
the system consists of two mobile sources MU1 and MU2 transmitting binary data
sequences S1 and S2 respectively, towards the relay node (RN) and a base station
(BS). Both user nodes have a symmetric positioning with respect to RN and BS.
Since radio terminals cannot transmit and receive simultaneously, the nodes are
assumed to operate in half-duplex mode and are using orthogonal channels. The
relay node decodes the intercepted packets, re-encodes them and performs network
coding on the information received from both the information nodes. Network coded
packets are then forwarded to the base station in the second phase of transmission.
Decoding is performed at the BS by combining the packets received from both
the user nodes and relay. The detailed protocol showing transmitting nodes, their
channel assignments, and the respective transmitted messages is shown in Table 6.1.
In the next paragraphs we describe the encoding operations at source and relay in
detail and decoder is discussed in subsequent subsections.
131
MU1
S1 S1
S3
S2 RN S2
MU2 BS
Figure 6.2: Multiple access relay channel with two users transmitting channel coded
information to a base station. Network coding operation is performed at the relay
node.
Table 6.1: Transmission schedule at the user and relay nodes.

Time slot Transmitter Message Receiver
1 MU1 S1 = C (1,p) , p = 1, ..., L1 RN, BS
2 MU2 S2 = C (2,p) , p = 1, ..., L2 RN, BS
3 RN S3 = C (r,p) , p = 1, ..., Lr BS
Encoding at Mobile User Nodes
Let Fq denote the finite field of size q. It assumed that Fq is an extension field
of F2 as q = 2m . The message vector for an (n, k) RS code is given as U (,p) =
(,p) (,p) (,p)
[U1 , U2 , ..., Uk ] Fqk , where n and k are the length and dimension of the
code, respectively, and n = q 1. The superscript {1, 2} denotes the mobile
user MU and variable p denotes the pth codeword or packet. The RS codeword p of
source MU- is obtained as
(,p) (,p)
C (,p) = U (,p) G = [C1 , C2 , ..., Cn(,p) ] Fqn (6.2.1)
where G is the generator matrix of the RS code. In practice, the bits from each
(,p)
source are grouped into m bit symbols, Ui Fq , for i = 1, ..., k and coded with
(n, k) RS code. The encoding at MU nodes is shown in the Figure 6.3(a). The RS
code has dual functions; first, it is efficient against burst errors, since a sequence
of m + 1 consecutive bit errors can affect at most two code symbols. Second, RS
code aids in iterative joint network-channel decoding as discussed in next section.
132
(w,p) (w,p) (w,p)

U C C' w
Information (n, k) RS Reorder into S
symbols Encoder
Pw Lw x n matrix BPSK
(a)
MU1 RS Decode
packets & encode Row RSCC Parity Sr
ordering (column by column)
BPSK
MU2 RS Decode
packets & encode
(b)
Figure 6.3: (a) Block diagram of encoder at mobile user nodes, (b) Network coding
operation at relay node.
At each source node, L codewords are generated, grouped into a frame and inter-
leaved with . The stream is then formed into matrix of size L n, where each
row forms a packet. Each packet is thus composed of randomized symbols from dif-
0(,p) 0(,p) 0(,p)
ferent RS codewords and is represented as C 0(,p) = [C1 , C2 , ..., Cn ] Fqn
where p now indicates packet number of each source. The symbol array C 0(,p) are
0(,p) 0(,p) 0(,p)
converted into bit array c0(,p) = [c1 , c2 , ..., cmn ] F2mn . The translated bits
are modulated and broadcast to BS and relay.
Encoding at Relay Node
The function of the relay node is to perform network coding on the incoming packets
from two sources. In case of simple XOR based network coding, one packet from
source MU1 is linearly combined, using bit-by-bit XOR operation, with packet from
source MU2 and the resulting bits are transmitted to the BS. Resulting network
code at relay node has rate of 2/3. The Figure 6.3(b) shows the proposed encoding
operation at the relay node. The relay node overhears transmission from both the
MU nodes during the first phase of transmission, decodes and reencodes them. The
reencoded packets are ordered into matrix S of size L mn bits, as shown in the
Figure 6.4, where L = L1 + L2 . Here, we have the first L rows belonging to the
cooperating users.
From these packets, remaining N L rows are generated using network code and
forwarded by the relay. In this research we use RSCC as network code instead of
133
m x n bits
Packet 1, MU1
}
Packet 1, MU2
Packet 2, MU1
Packet 2, MU2
L1 + L2 S
:
:
:
Packet L1, MU1
}
N
Parity node packets P
Figure 6.4: Data packets from two sources are ordered in alternate rows. Total
number of rows from two sources is L1 + L2 . Remaining rows of parity check bits
are calculated and transmitted from the relay node.
XOR based network code. RSCC of rate L/N is applied on each column of L bits,
from which N L parity check bits are obtained. The parity check bits forms matrix
P of size (N L) mn. It is to be noted that relay retransmits only the parity
part of RSCC. Puncturing may be applied on the parity bits to attain necessary
code rates. In this paper, every alternate row of the parity bits (P in the Figure
6.4) is punctured to obtain code rate of 2/3. Any different puncturing pattern may
be applied, but this may result in different performance. Network code is obtained
from these parity check bits and each row is transmitted as packet to the BS. Thus,
each row encounters a different channel and hence, bits in a row suffer from same
amount of fading.
Channel Model
The wireless channel is assumed to be flat Rayleigh fading channel and the fading
coefficient is constant for the duration of one packet transmission. Let the p-th
received packet at the BS from link l be denoted as ypl = [yp1
l l
, yp2 l
, ..., ypn ], for l
1, 2, r and p = 1, ..., Ll . Thus, the received signal from link l and packet p is
l
ypi = hlpi slpi + zpi
l
, i = 1, 2, ..., mn (6.2.2)
134
where, slpi is the transmitted symbol of unit energy. The fading coefficients hlpi
are zero mean complex valued Gaussian random variable with Rayleigh-distributed
envelope. The channel is assumed to experience slow Rayleigh fading such that
fading coefficients are nearly constant over one codeword interval. Gaussian noise
l
zpi experienced by the i th symbol of link l has double-sided power spectral density
N0 /2.
6.2.2 Iterative Network-Channel Decoder
The block diagram of the proposed iterative soft network-channel decoding algorithm
is shown in the Figure 6.5. At the receiver, RSCC and RS code are considered a
concatenated code structure and is decoded iteratively [185]. The next stages con-
sists of iterative soft decoding process in which MAP decoder is applied along the
columns for SISO decoding of RSCC and adaptive belief propagation (ABP) algo-
rithm [176] for SISO decoding of RS codes along rows. Assuming BPSK modulated
transmission, we denote the LLR of i-th received bit slpi of packet p from link l as
l (p, i) and is calculated as
l
l (p, i) = (|ypi + hlpi |2 |ypi
l
hlpi |2 )/N0 . (6.2.3)
Channel state information hlpi is assumed to be available at the base station. The
LLR of received packets are stacked over one another in the form the matrix ch
as given in the Figure 6.4. ch consists of alternate rows of LLRs of packets from
MU1 and MU2, while last (N L1 L2 ) rows are LLR of packets received form RN.
al , el and pl denote the a priori LLR, extrinsic LLR and the a posteriori LLR,
respectively and are related as
el = pl al (6.2.4)
Subscript l 1, 2, r indicates decoding operation associated with encoders at MU1,

MU2 and RN, respectively.
MAP decoding is performed on the columns of ch with corresponding column
from ar as a priori information. MAP decoding is performed using BCJR algorithm
[12] to calculate the extrinsic LLR matrix er . Since, er is an (L1 + L2 ) mn matrix
consisting of alternate rows of packets from MU1 and MU2, they are isolated and
135
e
-1 La1 RS ABP L1
Stack e
P1 Decoder
P1
y
1
G1 rows G1
ch e S1
BCJR Gr
2
y Calculate G2 G Isolate Combine
yr LLR decoder rows rows
a e S2
Gr Gr G2 a e
L2 RS ABP L2
P2-1 Decoder P2
Figure 6.5: Block diagram of the proposed decoder.
deinterleaved to obtain La1 and La2 . Each row in La1 and La2 constitute the a priori
LLRs of an RS codeword and can be decoded independently by applying ABP
algorithm. After an iteration of ABP on all the rows, extrinsic information Le and
a posteriori information Lp for = 1, 2 is obtained.
With Lp , BM algorithm [194] is performed to decode the RS codes. The re-
trieved codes are represented as S . Le1 and Le2 are then interleaved and rows are
combined into a priori LLR matrix ar for the next iteration of MAP decoder. The
decoding terminates once all the RS codewords satisfy parity check constraints or
the maximum number of iterations is reached.
MAP Decoding of RSCC
One of most popular MAP decoder used for decoding RSCC is BCJR algorithm.
We will briefly summarize the BCJR algorithm employed as network decoder in the
proposed scheme. Let ch (ci ) = ch (i, j), i = 1, ..., N , be the j-th column of ch
corresponding to a RSCC codeword c = [c1 , ..., ci , ..., cN ].
The BCJR decoder computes the a posteriori LLR p (ci ) with ch (ci ), i = 1, ..., N
and a priori LLR a (ci ) = ar (i, j), i = 1, ..., L as input, where a (ci ) is the j-th
column of ar . The a posteriori LLR is at the output of BCJR algorithm is defined
as
p P (ci = +1|y)
(ci ) = log . (6.2.5)
P (ci = 1|y)
BCJR decoder obtains a posteriori LLR by incorporating the trellis of the code:
0
P
p S + p(si1 = s , si = s, y)/p(y)
(ci ) = log P 0
, (6.2.6)
S p(si1 = s , si = s, y)/p(y)
136
where S is the set of all the states of trellis, si S is the state of the encoder at
time i. S + is the set of ordered pairs (s0 , s) corresponding to all state transitions
(si1 = s0 ) (si = s) caused by input ui = +1, and S is similarly defined for
ui = 1. Using Bayes rule, (6.2.5) can be written as

p P (y|ci = +1) P (ci = +1)
(ci ) = log + log (6.2.7)
P (y|ci = 1) P (ci = 1)
= e (ci ) + a (ci ), (6.2.8)
where, the second term a (ci ) represents a priori LLR and was applied as input
to the decoder. The term e (ci ) = p (ci ) a (ci ) is the extrinsic information is
obtained by subtracting a priori input from the output of the decoder. Extrinsic
LLR for column j is saved as er (i, j) = e (ci ), i = 1, ..., L and er is passed on to the
next decoder stage.
SISO Decoding of Reed-Solomon Codes
The next stage consists of ABP algorithm for SISO decoding of RS codes. ABP
algorithm was explained in Section 3.3 of Chapter 3. In this section, we summarize
the important steps of ABP algorithm in the context of this research.
The extrinsic LLR matrix e of previous stage after deinterleaving becomes
matrix La for this stage. For simplification of notations, let the LLR of bits in i-th
row (or i-th RS codeword) at iteration t be denoted as
(t) (cj ) = La (i, j), j = 1, ..., mn (6.2.9)
where, (t) = [(t) (c1 ), ..., (t) (cj ), ..., (t) (cmn )] acts as a priori information for an
RS codeword. To update the parity check matrix H, |(t) (cj )| is sorted in ascending
order of magnitude and sorting index are stored as = [j1 , j2 , ..., jmn ]. Columns of
the matrix H are then reordered according to the permutation to obtain (H).
Gaussian elimination then reduces the first independent m(n k) columns to iden-
tity submatrix. Let this matrix be denoted as H 0 . Finally, inverse permutation is
performed on the columns of H 0 as follows:
H 00 = 1 (H 0 ). (6.2.10)
137
Calculation of extrinsic information is performed using sum-product algorithm based

on adapted parity-check matrix H 00 . For each bit of RS code, the extrinsic LLR is
obtained as

m(nk) mn (t)
X Y (cp )
e(t) (cj ) = 2 tanh1 tanh . (6.2.11)
00 =1 00 =1
2
i=1,Hij p=1,p6=j,Hip
A posteriori LLR is then updated as (6.2.12) to perform classical RS decoding,
(t+1) (cp ) = (t) (cp ) + e(t) (cj ), (6.2.12)
where, 0 < 1 is a damping coefficient. Its value is taken to be 0.3 according to

[185]. The extrinsic information e(t) (cj ) for the i-th row obtained for this decoding
iteration is saved into the matrix Le as follows
Le (i, j) = e(t) (cj ), j = 1, ..., mn. (6.2.13)
Le is then interleaved using and rows of LLR are combined back into ar . The
combined LLR matrix ar is of size (L1 + L2 ) mn and is of form given in the Figure
6.4. The iterations are run a predetermined number of times or until parity checks
are satisfied.
6.2.3 Complexity Analysis
In this section, we analyze the complexity incurred by the proposed iterative decod-
ing algorithm. Since, encoding operation at the user nodes and encoding/decoding
at relay is not different for both proposed and baseline scheme, we concentrate only
on the decoding complexity in this paper. The following calculations are based on
analysis done by Li Chen [185]. As discussed in earlier sections, the iterative de-
coder consists of two constituent decoders BCJR and ABP algorithm. An iteration
of BCJR decoding algorithm for RSCC requires O(12(L1 + L2 )) floating point
operations, where is the number of states of the RSCC coder. SISO decoding
of RS code, consists of three stages, which includes Gaussian elimination, belief
propagation or sum-product algorithm and RS hard decision decoding. Gaussian
elimination process requires O(mn(mn km)2 ) binary operations. If is the aver-
age row weight of adapted parity check matrix H 00 , each iteration of sum-product
138
algorithm requires O((n k)m2 ) floating point operations. Finally, performing RS

hard decision decoding using BM algorithm requires O(n2 ) finite field arithmetic
operations [214].
With this information, we now analyse the approximate decoding complexity of
the proposed algorithm and compare it with that of reference decoder. For each
iteration of ABP algorithm, Gaussian elimination and belief propagation algorithm
is run for maximum of Niter number of times and after completion of iteration hard
decision BM algorithm is applied. The iterations may terminate early for higher SNR
values. Therefore, together with BCJR algorithm, the proposed iterative decoder
requires at most
O(Niter (12(L1 + L2 )mn + (n k)m2 (L1 + L2 ))) (6.2.14)
floating point operations. In the above equation, (L1 + L2 ) is the total number of
RS codewords received from both the mobile users. Number of binary operations
required is
O(Niter (L1 + L2 )mn(mn km)2 ) (6.2.15)
Since, hard decision BM algorithm is applied after completion of Niter number of

sum-product algorithm iterations, there is at most
O((L1 + L2 )n2 ) (6.2.16)
finite field arithmetic operations.

If similar system is implemented with classical Viterbi algorithm for decoding
RSCC, it will require O(2(L1 + L2 )) floating point operations. For BM algorithm,
number of finite field arithmetic operations required will be O((L1 + L2 )n2 ). It
is obvious that complexity of the proposed algorithm is far greater than one-shot
Viterbi-BM algorithm. This increased complexity is justified considering the signifi-
cant improvement in bit error rate. Decoding complexity imposed by ABP algorithm
can be further reduced by adopting newer algorithm for SISO decoding of RS codes
like [215].
139
6.2.4 EXIT Analysis
In this section we utilize extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) chart [14, 216], to
analyze the iterative decoding behavior of the proposed network-channel decoder.
It allows us to visualize the decoding trajectory of iterative decoder components
and prediction of BER performance. This in turn facilitates selection of suitable
constituent codes for the scheme without time consuming Monte Carlo simulations
for evaluating the performance of the scheme.
A fundamental assumption of EXIT chart analysis is that extrinsic information
passed from one SISO decoder to other is a Gaussian distributed random variable.
The LLR a of a priori input for uncoded information x {+1, 1} is modeled as
a = a x + na , (6.2.17)
where, na is a Gaussian random variable with zero mean and variance a2 . The
variance must satisfy the condition a = a2 /2. The mutual information between a
and x is defined as
1 X 2pa (|x)
I(x, a ) = pa (|x) d, (6.2.18)
2 x=1 pa (|x = 1)pa (|x = +1)
where pa (|x) is conditional probability density function associated with a . There-

fore, for a priori LLR a , mutual information is given as Ia = I(x, a ). Similarly,
mutual information for extrinsic output e is obtained as Ie = I(x, e ). To obtain
EXIT chart, we artificially generate the a priori inputs a to be fed into SISO de-
coder modules for given values of Ia . Then the corresponding decoding algorithm
of the block is invoked to produce extrinsic output e . The mutual information Ie
is then evaluated using relation (6.2.18). Finally, EXIT chart is obtained as the
graphical plot between Ia and Ie . For decoding without any residual error, Ie should
equal 1 for some value of Ia .
Figure 6.6 shows the EXIT characteristics of the proposed decoding scheme with
(15, 11) RS code. The inner decoder (Decoder 1 indicated by superscript in symbols
(1) (1)
Ia and Ie ) consists of punctured (5, 7)8 RSCC acting as network code with code
(1) (1)
rate of 2/3. The (Ia , Ie ) curves are plotted with average channel Eb /N0 of 2 dB
(2) (2)
and 3 dB. Inverse EXIT characteristics (Ie , Ia ) is also obtained for decoder 2
140
0.9
0.8
(I(2)
a
)
0.7
I (1)
e
0.6
0.5 RS (15,11)
Eb/N0 = 2 dB
Eb/N0 = 3 dB
0.4
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
I (1)
a
(I(2)
e
)
Figure 6.6: EXIT chart of the proposed network-channel decoder with (15,11) RS
code as channel code (outer code) and punctured (5, 7)8 RSCC acting as network
code with code rate of 2/3.
0.95
0.9
(I(2)
a
)
0.85
I (1)
e
0.8
0.75 RS (31,27)
Eb/N0 = 3 dB
Eb/N0 = 4 dB
0.7
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
I (1)
a
(I(2)
e
)
Figure 6.7: EXIT chart with (31,27) RS code and punctured (15, 17)8 RSCC acting
as network code with code rate of 2/3.
141
(outer RS decoder consisting of ABP algorithm). As shown in the figure, at 2 dB,

the tunnel starts to open between EXIT curve of decoder 1 and decoder 2, and at
3 dB, the tunnel is completely open. Therefore, the decoder bit error rate (BER)
cliff is expected to start at 2 dB and can be verified in the Figure 6.9. The EXIT
chart for the system with (31, 27) RS code as channel code and punctured (15, 17)8
RSCC acting as network code is given in the Figure 6.7, where turbo-cliff starts for
Eb N0 3 dB. The corresponding improvement in BER performance with decoding
iterations is indicated in the Figure 6.10.
EXIT chart can be used for selecting a suitable network code from the family of
RSCC. The Figure 6.8 shows the EXIT chart of the proposed algorithm with RS (15,
11) as outer code (channel code) and different convolutional codes (network code).
The three convolutional codes considered are with four state (5, 7)8 , eight state
(15, 17)8 , and 16 state (23, 35)8 trellis. Similar to the earlier two cases, the channels
are assumed to be Rayleigh flat fading with different links suffer independent amount
of fading. As can be seen in the Figure 6.8, at Eb /N0 = 2.5 dB the tunnel between
(1) (1) (2) (2)
(Ia , Ie ) and (Ie , Ia ) curves are already opened for RSCC with trellis polynomial
(1) (1)
(23, 35)8 and (5, 7)8 . With increase in channel Eb /N0 values, the (Ia , Ie ) curve
(1)
move upward for lower values of Ia and the first opening in the tunnel appears
for (5, 7)8 RSCC. The tunnel between other two EXIT curve open up subsequently
with increase in SNR. Hence, coding scheme using (5, 7)8 convolutional code will
encounter waterfall region earlier than other two codes.
6.2.5 Performance of Iterative Network-Channel Decoder

in MARC
In this section, we demonstrate through simulations that proposed iterative network-

channel decoder shows considerable improvement over existing scheme. As explained
earlier, we consider MARC scheme with two users cooperatively transmitting to the
BS. An intermediate relay node RN assists in transmission by performing network
coding on the incoming bits and relaying it to BS. SNR of MU-BS and RN-BS links
are assumed to be same unless mentioned otherwise. For comparison we consider
the reference scheme proposed in [173]. The performance is evaluated for binary
142
0.9
0.8
I (1)
e
(I(2)
a
)
0.7
RS (15,11) (outer dec)

(23,35) 8 rscc (inner dec)
0.6
(15,17) 8 rscc (inner dec)
(5,7)8 rscc (inner dec)
0.5
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
I (1)
a
(I(2)
e
)
Figure 6.8: EXIT chart with (15, 11) RS outer code and different RSCC codes as
network code.
phase shift keying (BPSK) modulated signal transmitted over Rayleigh block fading
channel, i.e. the channel fading coefficient is assumed to be constant for the duration
of one packet. RN is assumed to be near the source nodes, MU1 and MU2 and MU-
RN links are assumed to be AWGN channel. In this research, number of packets
transmitted by both the source is L1 = L2 = 20.
First we investigate the iterative convergence behavior of the proposed design.
The Figure 6.9 shows BER performance of the proposed network-channel decoder
with (15, 11) RS code as channel code and punctured (5, 7)8 RSCC as network code.
It can be observed that iteration gain is obtained for Eb /N0 values higher than 2 dB,
as predicted in EXIT chart of the Figure 6.6. Error rate decreases with increase in
iterations and there is no significant improvement in BER after 10 iterations. The
Figure 6.10 shows the performance of the iterative decoder with (31, 27) RS code
and (15, 17)8 RSCC combination, in which iteration gain starts for Eb /N0 3 dB.
Best BER performance is achieved for 10 iterations or more. This corresponds to
EXIT chart in the Figure 6.7, as explained earlier.
Next we look at the interaction between channel and network code. For this pur-
143
100
10-1
10-2
BER
10-3
1 iter
10-4 2 iter
3 iter
5 iter
10 iter
10-5
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
Eb /N0 (dB)
Figure 6.9: BER performance of the proposed scheme using (15, 11) RS code and
punctured (5, 7)8 RSCC with number of decoding iterations over Rayleigh block
fading channel.
100
10-1
10-2
BER
10-3
10-4
1 iter
2 iter
10-5 3 iter
5 iter
10 iter
10-6
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Eb /N0 (dB)
Figure 6.10: BER performance for (31,27) RS code (15, 17)8 RSCC combination
with number of decoding iterations over Rayleigh block fading channel.
144
pose, we fix the channel code at the user nodes to (15,11) RS codes and look at con-
volutional codes with different generator polynomials applied as network code. To
compare the performance with XOR based network code and the reference scheme,
the convolutional code at the relay is punctured to get rates close to 2/3. The pro-
posed decoding algorithm is run for 10 iterations. With all the links having same
average received SNR, the Figure 6.11 shows average bit error rate of the MARC as
function of Eb /N0 . For comparison we also show the results obtained in the reference
scheme [173] with a similar network-channel decoding scheme. It is observed that
the average bit error probability of the proposed scheme has improved considerably
compared to the reference system. In contrast to the proposed scheme, the refer-
ence scheme uses BCH code as both channel and network code. For instance, using
punctured (23, 35)8 RSCC as network code, a gain of nearly 1.5 dB can be observed
at a bit error rate of 103 , as compared to (63, 39, 9) BCH code based network
coding. Compared to (31, 21, 5) BCH code based network code, gain is even more
significant (of 2.5 dB) at bit error rate of 103 . Whereas, the gain of the proposed
scheme with (5, 7)8 RSCC network code with respect to (63, 39, 9) and (31, 21, 5)
BCH code based network code is 1 dB and 2 dB, respectively. For the purpose of
comparison, the Figure 6.11 also shows the performance of the baseline scheme with
XOR based network code.
Next we simulate another type of interaction between channel and network code
where network coding at the relay node is kept fixed and channel code is varied.
The Figure 6.12 illustrates the bit error rate of the proposed scheme with punctured
(5, 7)8 RSCC as network code. The channel codes considered are (15,7), (15,11) and
(7,4) Reed Solomon (RS) codes. It can be observed that relative gain in performance
is higher than that of baseline scheme consisting of relatively complex (31,21,5) BCH
code as network code, and channel codes being (15,7), (15,11), (7,4) BCH code. For
example, to achieve bit error rate of 104 the relative gain of the proposed coding
scheme with user channel code of (15,7) RS code is about 2 dB better compared to
corresponding reference scheme with (15,7) BCH code. On the other hand the gain
is 3 dB for (15, 11) block code used as channel code at the user nodes. But the gain
is reduced to 2 dB for (7,4) block codes used as channel code at the two user nodes.
145
100
NC w/ (5,7) RSCC
NC w/ (23,35) RSCC
NC w/ (15,17) RSCC
10-1 Ref. w/ (63,39,9)
Ref. w/ (31,21,5)
Ref. w/ XOR
Average BER
10-2
10-3
10-4
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Eb /N0 (dB)
Figure 6.11: Performance comparison of the proposed iterative decoder with different
reference schemes. Different network codes at relay node are evaluated for a fixed
channel code at the user nodes.
100
CC w/ RS (15,7)
CC w/ RS (15,11)
CC w/ RS (7,4)
10-1
Ref. w/ (15,7)
Ref. w/ (15,11)
Ref. w/ (7,4)
10-2
Average BER
10-3
10-4
10-5
10-6
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Eb /N0 (dB)
Figure 6.12: Performance comparison with different channel codes at the user nodes
and fixed network coding at relay.
146
10-2
10-3
BER
10-4
10-5
User 1
User 2
10-6
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1 (2 = 10 - 1 )
Figure 6.13: Performance of proposed scheme in asymmetric scenario over Rayleigh

fading channel, with average relay-destination SNR of 8 dB. Average SNR of User
1 to destination is 1 and user 2 to destination SNR is 2 = 10 1 .
Though, all the simulations performed in this paper use BPSK modulation, this can
be easily extended to higher order modulations.
The Figure 6.13 shows the performance of the proposed scheme in asymmetric
SNR scenario. The information at both sources are encoded with (15,7) RS code
and network coding operation is done at the relay with (15, 17)8 RSCC as mother
code. Similar to scenario in [173], we study a case where sum of SNRs for the direct
links of the users is assumed constant, that is, 1 + 2 = 10 dB. Average received
SNR of the relay-destination link is assumed constant with 3 = 8 dB. It can be
observed that because of coupling between the two users at relay node, SNR of one
link affects the BER performance of other link also. When one of users has bad link,
both users will experience bad link performance regardless of the other users link
quality. Thus, best performance is obtained with the proposed scheme when SNR
of both the links are almost equal.
147
MU1
S1
S1
RN
S2
MU2 S2 BS
(a)
MU1
S3
S5
RN
S4
MU2 BS
(b)
Figure 6.14: Space-time and network coded cooperation. (a) In first phase, user
nodes broadcast information to relay, base station and other user node. (b) Second
phase consists of retransmission by user nodes and relay node.
6.3 Iterative Network-Channel Decoding with Co-

operative Space-Time Transmission
6.3.1 System Model
We consider the scenario shown in the Figure 6.14, with two mobile users (MU1
and MU2) nodes communicating information to a common BS. The two MU nodes
cooperate with each other using Alamouti space-time block code. In addition, a
dedicated relay node performs network coding on the information received from
both the information nodes. We further assume that all the nodes are using or-
thogonal channels with relay node operating in half-duplex mode. Similar scenario
is presented in [162] for evaluating the performance improvement due to additional
network coding node. But instead of simple XOR based network coding, we consider
convolutional encoder as network code and evaluate the performance of the system
in iterative decoding scenario. Next we describe the channel coding operation at the
MU nodes and relay.
148
Lw x k (n, k) RS Reorder into Sw

Encoder
Pw Lw x n matrix BPSK
information
symbols
(a)
MU1 RS Decode
packets & encode Sr
Row RSCC Parity
ordering (column by column)
BPSK
MU2 RS Decode
packets & encode
(b)
Figure 6.15: (a) Block diagram of encoder at mobile user nodes, (b) Network coding
operation at relay node.
Encoding at Mobile User Nodes
Encoding at MU nodes is similar to process described in Section 6.2. Bits to be

transmitted are provided protection against error by RS code. The RS code has
dual functions; first, it is efficient against burst errors, since a sequence of m + 1
consecutive bit errors can affect at most two code symbols. Second, RS code aids
in iterative joint network-channel decoding as discussed in next sections.
The bits from each source is grouped into m bit symbols belonging to GF (2m ).
The encoding at MU nodes is shown in the Figure 6.15(a). The symbols are coded
with (n, k) RS code, where k is the number of information symbols in a codeword.
Thus at node MU , L codewords are generated (each codeword consists of n
symbols), where = 1, 2. They are grouped into a frame and interleaved with .
The stream is then formed into matrix of size L n, where each row forms a packet.
The symbols are translated into bits and transmitted as S . At time slot t = 1 and
t = 2, encoded message blocks S1 and S2 are transmitted, respectively.
Network Coding at Relay
The Figure 6.15(b) shows the encoding operation at the relay node. The relay
node overhears transmission from both the MU nodes during time slot t = 1, 2,
decodes and reencodes them. The reencoded packets are ordered into matrix of
size (L1 + L2 ) mn bits. The rows from the two cooperating sources are arranged
alternately as shown in the Figure 6.4. In this research, we use RSCC as network
149
code instead of XOR based network code. RSCC of rate (L1 + L2 )/N is applied on
each column of length (L1 + L2 ) bits, and N L1 L2 parity bits are generated.
Puncturing may be applied on the parity bits to attain necessary code rates. Network
code Sr is obtained from these parity check bits and each row is transmitted as packet
to the BS. Thus each row encounters different channel and bits in a row suffer from
same amount of fading.
Cooperative Communication Protocol
The transmission of the message is accomplished in two phase or five time slots. The
first two phases or four time slots constitute transmission by distributed Alamouti
code. In the first phase (Figure 6.14(a)), the mobile users MU1 and MU2 broadcast
their messages S1 and S2 over wireless channel, respectively. This being broadcast
phase, the transmitted messages are received by the BS, relay and the other user.
Table 6.2: Transmission schedule at the mobile user and relay nodes.
Time slot (t) 1 2 3 4 5
Transmitter MU1 MU2 MU1 MU2 RN
Message S1 S2 S2 S1 Sr
In the next multiple access phase, the cooperating users MU1 transmits S2 at
time slot t = 3 and MU2 transmits S1 at time slot t = 4 to the BS. The relay node
decodes the signal received from both the users, reencodes them using RS code.
Bits from both the sources are combined, network coded and transmitted to the
destination as Sr . The scenario in second phase is illustrated in the Figure 6.14(b).
As mentioned earlier, all the nodes transmit in orthogonal channels (separate time
slots), the Table 6.2 details the channel assignment for different transmitting nodes.
6.3.2 Iterative Network-Channel Decoder
The signal received at the BS after two phases of transmission and cooperative
Alamouti relaying from two MS, in matrix vector notation, is

1 1
y h h2 s n
pi = 1 pi + 1 (6.3.19)
2
ypi h2 h1 s2pi n2
150
where, slpi is the i-th bit of packet p transmitted from source MU l for l = 1, 2,
l
and ypi is the signal received corresponding to it. Also, hl , l = 1, 2 denotes complex
multiplicative fading coefficients for MU-BS channel and is assumed to be constant
for at least one codeword duration. It is worth mentioning again that each row of
bits of matrix in the Figure 6.4 undergoes different fading. Utilizing (6.3.19), log-
liklihood ratios (LLR) of the received packets from the two sources are obtained as
1 , 2 , respectively, using soft-output Alamouti decoder [201].
On the other hand, signal received at the relay node is
r
ypi = hr srpi + nr (6.3.20)
where, hr is fading coefficient from RN to BS. The corresponding LLR is calculated

r
as r (p, i) = (|ypi + h3 |2 |ypi
r
h3 |2 )/N0 . The rows of LLR l , l = 1, 2, r are
stacked over one another to form the 2-D array ch in the order given in the Figure
6.4. Output ch of soft Alamouti decoder consists of alternate rows of LLRs of RS
codewords from MU1 and MU2, while last (N L1 L2 ) rows are LLR of bits
received form RN.
At the receiver RSCC and RS code can be considered a concatenated code struc-
ture and can be decoded iteratively [185]. The next stages consists of iterative soft
decoding process in which BCJR algorithm [12] is applied along the columns for
soft decoding of RSCC and ABP algorithm [176] for iterative soft decoding of RS
codes along rows. In ABP algorithm, at first, the parity check matrix is adapted
according to the incoming LLR, and then, sum-product algorithm [194] is applied to
calculate the extrinsic information. After finite number of iterations, BM algorithm
for decoding RS code is applied to the hard-decisions made on the updated LLR.
Extrinsic information is passed between the two SISO decoders for finite number of
iterations or until decoding of all the RS codes is successful. The block diagram of
the proposed decoder is shown in the Figure 6.16.
An iteration of BCJR algorithm on the columns of LLR matrix ch generates
extrinsic LLR e . The LLR matrix e consists of alternate rows of extrinsic LLR
for the two sources, which are isolated at next stage into e1 and e2 . Applying
deinterleaving mapping 1 e a
on extrinsic LLR , a priori LLR L for next stage
of iterative decoder is obtained. An iteration of ABP algorithm is applied on all

151
e
-1 La1 RS ABP L1
Stack e
P1 Decoder
P1
1 G1 rows G1
y S1
2 Alamouti G2 G
ch
BCJR Ge Isolate Combine
y soft output decoder rows rows
r a e S2
y Gr G G2 a e
L2 RS ABP L2
Calculate LLR
P2-1 Decoder P2
Figure 6.16: Block diagram of the proposed decoder.
the rows of La independently and resulting extrinsic information is saved as Le . If

a row of RS code satisfies the parity check requirement, it is decoded and saved in
S i . Extrinsic information from both the RS decoders is interleaved, combined (into
2-D array shown in the Figure 6.4) and applied as a priori information to the BCJR
decoder. This constitutes an iteration of the proposed decoder.
6.3.3 EXIT Analysis
The Figure 6.17 shows the EXIT characteristics of the proposed decoder with (31,25)
RS code. The inner decoder (decoder 1) consists of the cooperative Alamouti space-
time decoder and punctured (7, 5)8 convolutional code acting as network code with
overall code rate of 2/5. The (Ia , Ie ) curves are plotted with inner decoder 1 for
average channel Eb /N0 of 6, 7 and 8 dB. Inverse EXIT characteristics (Ie , Ia ) of
decoder 2 (outer RS decoder running JN algorithm) is also shown in the figure. It
shows, at 6 dB, the tunnel starts to open between EXIT curve of decoder 1 and
decoder 2, and at 7 dB, the tunnel is completely open. Therefore, the decoder bit
error rate (BER) cliff is expected to start at 6 dB and can be verified in the Figure
6.19. Similarly, EXIT chart for the proposed system with (15,7) is given in the
Figure 6.18, where turbo-cliff starts at 5 dB as shown in the Figure 6.20.
152
0.95
0.9
0.85
I (1)
e
(I(2)
a
)
0.8
0.75
RS (31,25)
0.7 Eb/No = 6 db
Eb/No = 7 db
Eb/No = 8 db
0.65
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
(1) (2)
I a (Ie )
Figure 6.17: EXIT chart of the proposed iterative soft decoder utilizing (31,25) RS
code (outer decoder) as channel code.
0.9
0.8
0.7
(I(2)
a
)
0.6
I (1)
e
0.5
0.4
RS (15,7)
0.3
Eb/No = 5 db
Eb/No = 6 db
0.2
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
(1) (2)
I a (Ie )
Figure 6.18: EXIT chart of the proposed iterative soft decoder utilizing (15,7) RS
code as channel code.
153
100
1 iter
5 iter
10 iter
10-1 20 iter
10-2
BER
10-3
10-4
10-5
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Eb /N0 (db)
Figure 6.19: BER performance of the proposed scheme using (31,25) RS code with
number of decoding iterations over Rayleigh block fading channel.
100
1 iter
2 iter
3 iter
5 iter
10-1
10-2
BER
10-3
10-4
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Eb /N0 (db)
Figure 6.20: BER performance of the proposed scheme using (15,7) RS code with
number of decoding iterations over Rayleigh block fading channel.
154
6.3.4 Performance of Iterative Network-Channel Decoder

with Cooperative Space-Time Transmission
In this section, we demonstrate through simulations that cooperative space-time

coded iterative network-channel decoder outperforms similar system utilizing XOR
based network coding. The performance is evaluated for BPSK modulated signal
transmitted over Rayleigh block fading channel, i.e. the channel fading coefficient is
assumed to be constant for the duration of one codeword. As explained earlier, we
consider MARC scheme with two users cooperatively transmitting using Alamouti
STBC to the BS. An intermediate relay node assists in the transmission through
network coding.
First, we investigate the iterative convergence behavior of the proposed design.
The Figure 6.19 shows BER performance of the proposed network-channel decoder
with (31,25) RS code as channel code and rate 2/3 RSCC as network code. In this
research, number of packets transmitted by both the source is L1 = L2 = 20. It is
also assumed that SNR of all the MU-BS and RN-BS links are same, unless specified
otherwise. An error free channel is assumed between the MU, whereas, link between
MU and RN is AWGN channel. It can be observed that iterative decoding gain is
obtained for Eb /N0 6 dB, as predicted in EXIT chart of the Figure 6.17. Error
rate decreases with increase in iterations and there is no significant improvement
in BER after 20 iterations. The Figure 6.20 shows the performance of the iterative
decoder with (15,7) RS code, in which iteration gain starts for Eb /N0 5 dB. Best
BER performance is achieved for 5 iterations or more. This corresponds to EXIT
chart in the Figure 6.18.
Next, in the Figure 6.21, we compare the BER performance of the proposed
system (indicated as Iter RS-CC) to reference scheme [162] which applies XOR based
network coding and MU nodes cooperate using distributed Alamouti code (indicated
as Ref RS-XOR). In the proposed scheme, (31,25) RS code is used as channel encoder
and network code is derived by puncturing rate 1/2 RSCC of generator polynomial
(5, 7)8 to get rate 2/3 code. The result is compared to BER curve obtained with
reference system utilizing (31,25) RS code as channel code at the MU nodes and
155
XOR based network coding at RN. Overall code rate in both the cases is 2/5.
It can be observed that proposed scheme benefits from iterative decoding of
network and channel codes, where there is an improvement of 5.25 dB in Eb /N0
for achieving BER of 104 . Performance of both the schemes can be improved if
the link between relay node and the base station is better. The Figure 6.21 also
illustrates BER for both the schemes with SNR of RN-BS link 10 dB higher than
MU-BS link. For the proposed scheme, there is an improvement of 0.5 dB, compared
to equal SNR case, to achieve BER of 104 . For the reference scheme, improvement
in this case is 0.65 dB. Performance of the reference scheme without RS coding at
the MU, XOR network coding at RN and cooperative space-time transmission is
also shown for reference. Stronger RSCC used as network code can improve the
error performance of the scheme as illustrated in the Figure 6.22.
6.4 Conclusion
In section 6.2, an iterative network-channel decoder has been proposed for MARC
setup. The received signal at BS is considered output of a product code, though
encoding is done by different codes at geographically isolated locations. In this 2-D
product code structure, rows are formed by the channel coded packets from two
users, and columns formed by network code at the relay. Proposed scheme con-
sists of channel coding performed by RS codes at the user nodes and punctured
convolutional code acting as network code at the common relay. Iterative soft de-
cision decoding is performed at the receiver by exchanging extrinsic information
between RS and convolutional codes. Considerable improvement in bit error rate
performance is obtained with the proposed scheme when compared to the base-
line network-channel scheme. The EXIT analysis of the proposed decoder has been
presented for validating the decoding convergence.
In section 6.3, the work on network-channel decoder has been extended to space-
time-network coded cooperation over wireless network. The proposed scheme use
RS code as channel code and punctured RSCC based network code, with space-
time cooperation between source nodes. First stage of the receiver generates soft
156
100
10-1
10-2
BER
10-3
10-4
Iter RS-CC
Ref RS-XOR
Iter RS-CC, +10db
10-5 Ref RS-XOR,+10db
Ref. XOR
Coop Alamouti
10-6
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18
Eb /N0 (dB)
Figure 6.21: Performance comparison of the proposed iterative decoder with a ref-
erence scheme employing XOR based network code. BER performance are also
compared for the case when SNR at relay is 10 dB higher than direct links.
100
(2,3)8
(5,7)8
10-1 (15,17) 8
10-2
BER
10-3
10-4
10-5
10-6
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Eb /N0 (dB)
Figure 6.22: Performance of the proposed iterative scheme using (31,25) RS code
for different RSCC used as network code.
157
decisions from space-time decoder and is applied to a cascade of BCJR decoder and
SISO RS decoding stage. Improvement in error rate performance has been obtained
with proposed scheme and compared to scheme using XOR based network code. The
EXIT analysis of the proposed decoder has been presented to validate the decoding
convergence results.
******
Chapter 7
Conclusions and Future Work
This dissertation embodies the results of our investigation on iterative decoding

schemes for communication over wireless channel. In this work, we proposed the
application of iterative decoding for several schemes related to multiple description
coding and network coding. Multiple description coding schemes were proposed
for transmission of image over wireless channel and network coding schemes were
applied for transmission of data over multiple access relay channel. Conclusion of
this research is stated next.
7.1 Conclusion
7.1.1 Soft Iterative Decoding of FEC based MDC
A FEC based MDC decoding scheme using SISO RS decoder has been proposed.
The scheme utilizes soft information available at the output of inner RSCC decoder
for SISO decoding of outer RS code. After an iteration, RS decoder in turn generates
extrinsic information, which is applied back to RSCC (BCJR) decoder. Performance
of the proposed scheme [170, 183] has been compared to similar reference scheme
[80] in literature for transmission of SPIHT coded image. In case of COAF and
CODF relay channels, performance is compared to baseline system based on scheme
proposed in [187].
In the simulations performed with setup given in Section 3.5, PSNR gain
158
159
obtained by iteration (iteration gain) saturates after 10 iterations. Maximum

iteration gain of 8.5 dB in PSNR is obtianed at AWGN channel SNR of 0.5
dB and for Rayleigh flat fading channel, this gain is 11 db at channel SNR of
2 dB.
In AWGN channel, proposed scheme requires 1 dB less channel SNR compared

to tandem scheme to reach maximum PSNR value. Although, the PSNR
performance of the proposed scheme is comparable for channel SNR 1.5
dB, the proposed scheme performs considerable better compared to reference
scheme for channel SNR values less than 1.5 dB.
In case of Rayleigh fast fading channel, proposed scheme outperforms tandem

scheme for channel SNR < 5 dB, while being comparable at channel SNR 5
dB. Compared to the reference scheme, proposed scheme performs better for
channel SNR < 2.5 dB, whereas, reference scheme performs better compared
to proposed scheme for channel SNR > 2.5 dB.
In quasi-static Rayleigh fading channel, proposed scheme performs consistently

better compared to both tandem and reference schemes. The channel SNR
requirement for the proposed scheme to achieve maximum PSNR is 4 dB less
compared to both these schemes.
Increase in number of relay candidates in COAF and CODF schemes result in

improvement in PSNR performance for both proposed and baseline schemes.
When aided by a single relay (R = 1) in COAF, proposed scheme provides a

maximum PSNR gain of 9 dB compared to baseline scheme at channel SNR of
3 dB. Whereas, for the case of four relays, the maximum PSNR gain is 7 dB
at SNR of 2 dB, indicating reduction in gain obtained by iterative decoding.
Thus, diversity gain provided by increased number of relays reduce the possi-
bility for further iterative decoding gain. Similar conclusion is also drawn for
CODF relay channel.
Proposed iterative decoder requires at most O(Niter (12pmn + (n k)pm2 ))

floating point operations, O(Niter pmn(mn mk)2 ) binary operations and
160
O(pn2 ) finite field arithmetic operations. Though the complexity of proposed

iterative is very high compared to tandem RSCC-RS MDC scheme, this is
justified considering significant improvement in PSNR.
Thus, in general, the proposed iterative decoding scheme results in improvement

of PSNR compared to tandem and reference schemes. While the proposed scheme
performs better compared to tandem scheme for all the channels considered, there is
marked improvement in PSNR compared to the reference scheme in relatively noisy
channels.
7.1.2 Iterative Decoding of FEC Based MDC with Hard RS

Decoder
To reduce computational overhead due to SISO RS decoder, iterative decoding

schemes which utilize hard decision RS decoder for FEC based MDC has been
proposed. The first scheme [172, 188] is a two stage LDPC-RS decoder consisting
of RS code in cascade with LDPC code in 2-D framework. Though the RS decoder
utilized in the proposed scheme is a hard decision decoder, iterative decoding is
realized by utilizing the correctly decoded bits of RS codewords acting as a priori
information for LDPC decoder. In the second scheme, benefit of iterative decoding
in case of DSTBC-MIMO systems bas been demonstrated. This DSTBC-RSCC-RS
decoding scheme [189] consists of cascade of hard decision RS decoder and SISO
RSCC-DSTBC decoder.
For the simulation setup given in Section 4.2.3, proposed iterative LDPC-
RS scheme in AWGN channel achieves maximum PSNR performance for 0.75
dB less SNR compared to tandem scheme (similar scheme without iterative
decoding) and 1.4 dB less compared to reference scheme in [80].
For Rayleigh channel with fading parameter fD Ts = 0.01, proposed LDPC-

RS scheme achieves maximum PSNR at channel SNR of 9 dB, which is 3
dB less compared to tandem scheme. With respect to reference scheme [80],
proposed scheme requires 1 dB less SNR to achieve maximum PSNR. Similar
161
improvement has also been shown in Rayleigh channel with fading parameter
fD Ts = 0.05.
In case of COST 207 Rural Area and Typical Urban, 6-tap frequency selective
channel, proposed LDPC-RS scheme has advantage in channel SNR of 4.5 dB
in achieving maximum PSNR compared to tandem scheme.
With the simulation setup given in Section 4.3.4, proposed three stage DSTBC-
RSCC-RS iterative decoding scheme, after four global iterations, shows an
improvement of 2.6 dB of channel SNR in achieving maximum value of PSNR.
After four inner and outer decoding loops (local iterations), proposed DSTBC-
RSCC-RS scheme shows an improvement of 2.4 dB in terms of channel SNR. It
is observed that if the code redundancy is not fully exploited by inner decoding
loop, it can be utilized to a certain extent in the outer decoding loop. Since the
outer decoding loop utilize hard decisions, it does not provide gain comparable
to a inner soft decision loop.
In Rayleigh fading channel with fD Ts = 0.01, proposed DSTBC-RSCC-RS

scheme has been implemented with linear prediction and per-survivor pro-
cessing. For non-coherent decoding with proposed decoder, the difference in
channel SNR (to achieve maximum PSNR) compared to coherent case is 1.0
dB and 1.4 dB for prediction order of 3 and 2, respectively. Thus, in this simu-
lation setup, proposed iterative decoding scheme reduces the 3 dB performance
gap of differential detection to a value of 1.0 dB.
For Rayleigh fading channel with fD Ts = 0.005, proposed DSTBC-RSCC-RS

scheme with linear prediction and per-survivor processing narrows the channel
SNR gap (to achieve maximum PSNR) with respect to coherent case to 0.8
dB.
In these two proposed schemes, namely LDPC-RS and DSTDC-RSCC-RS iterative

decoders, hard decisions are exchanged between RS decoder and other component
decoders. The results show considerable improvement by the proposed schemes
compared to existing scheme in literature and corresponding tandem decoders.
162
7.1.3 Iterative Source-Channel Decoding of Two-Channel

MDC
In the first part of Chapter 5, source-channel decoding scheme has been proposed
[190] based on concatenated accumulator-convolutional code-arithmetic code (ACC-
CC-AC) and compared to reference scheme [115]. Using the knowledge derived from
this scheme, source-channel decoding techniques are applied to two-channel MDSQ
based multiple description coding of image [168, 169] and compared to a reference
scheme by Song et al. [64]. In the proposed receiver, soft channel information is
used to improve the noise robustness of the arithmetic decoder and aid in iterative
soft decision decoding. Receiver for each description consist of SISO decoder for
variable length arithmetic codes, which exchange extrinsic information with SISO
RSCC decoder with the mediation of EREC-ST algorithm. Finally, available wavelet
coefficients are combined to obtain the reconstructed image.
After 10 iterations of proposed ACC-CC-AC decoding scheme with the simu-

lation setup in Section 5.2.3, an improvement of 1.5 dB in Eb /N0 is obtained
compared to reference system [115] consisting of iterative convolutional and
arithmetic decoder to achieve PER of 103 .
When proposed ACC-CC-AC scheme is used for transmission of image, there

is an improvement of 2 dB in Eb /N0 value in achieving maximum value of
PSNR for transmission of rate 0.4 bpp SPIHT coded image. For SPIHT coded
image of rate 1 bpp, the gain provided by iterative decoder is 1.5 dB.
Iterative source-channel coding technique has been applied to two-channel

MDC scheme of Song et al.. Existing scheme has been improved by adopt-
ing Chase-type SISO arithmetic decoder for decoding of multiple descriptions
transmitted over additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and packet loss chan-
nels.
Simulation setup for transmission of proposed 2-channel MDC is given in Sec-

tion 5.4.3. In 2-diagonal index assignment case, this scheme provides a maxi-
mum PSNR gain of 7 dB (at Eb /N0 of 3 dB) compared to reference scheme in
163
AWGN channel. For 3-diagonal case, this gain is 5.85 dB at Eb /N0 of 3 dB.
Over AWGN channel, proposed iterative MDC decoder (2-diagonal case) achieves
maximum PSNR at Eb /N0 of 3.5 dB, which is 1.5 dB less compared to the ref-
erence scheme. In 3-diagonal index assignment case, proposed iterative MDC
decoder achieves maximum PSNR at Eb /N0 of 4 dB, which is again 1.5 dB
less compared to the reference scheme.
In general, it can be concluded that iterative source-channel decoding applied in re-

construction of multiple descriptions result in improvement in image PSNR perfor-
mance. In this specific case of iterative decoding applied to convolutional and arith-
metic code results in improvement in performance compared to reference scheme [64].
7.1.4 Iterative Decoding of Network-Channel Code
In Chapter 6, soft iterative network-channel decoder has been proposed for two dif-
ferent scenarios. First scheme [174] consists of channel coding performed by RS codes
at the source nodes and punctured RSCC acting as network code at the common
relay. At the decoder, received signal is considered output of a 2-D product code,
though encoding is done by component codes in geographically isolated locations.
Iterative soft decision decoding is performed at the receiver by exchanging extrin-
sic information between SISO decoders for RS codes. When compared to scheme
proposed by Ben Slimane et al. [173], following conclusions are drawn.
Performance of the proposed scheme improves with number of decoding itera-

tions between channel and network code. There is no significant improvement
in performance after 10 iterations.
For the simulation setup given in Section 6.2.5, proposed scheme with (15,11)
RS code as channel code and (23, 35)8 RSCC as network code, a gain of 1.5
dB in Eb /N0 is obtained at bit error rate of 103 , as compared to (63, 39, 9)
BCH code based network coding in [173].
In general, there is considerable improvement in performance of the proposed

scheme compared to reference scheme for same overall code rate.
164
It is also observed that because of coupling between the two users at relay
node, SNR of one link affects the BER performance of other link also. When
one of users has bad link, both users will experience bad link performance
regardless of the other users link quality. Thus, best performance is obtained
with the proposed scheme when SNR of both the links are almost equal.
Proposed iterative decoder requires at most O(Niter (12(L1 + L2 )mn + (n

k)m2 (L1 + L2 ))) floating point operations, where (L1 + L2 ) is the total num-
ber of RS codewords received from both the mobile users. Number of bi-
nary operations required is O(Niter (L1 + L2 )mn(mn km)2 ) and there are
O((L1 + L2 )n2 ) finite field arithmetic operations. Though the complexity of
the proposed decoder is considerably high compared to reference scheme, it is
justified considering the improvement in performance obtained.
In the second part of this research, ideas developed in Section 6.2 has been
extended to scheme which combines the benefits of space-time codes and network
coding in MARC setup [175]. Similar to earlier scheme, the proposed scheme uses
punctured RSCC as network code at the relay and RS code as channel code. In addi-
tion, both the user nodes cooperate using distributed space-time code. Performance
is compared to baseline scheme developed out of work in [162].
In the simulation setup with (31, 25) RS code and (7, 5)8 RSCC, iterative
decoding gain is obtained for Eb /N0 6 dB. With (15, 7) RS code as channel
code, iteration gain starts for Eb /N0 5 dB.
With both proposed and baseline scheme are composed of (31, 25) RS code
and (7, 5)8 RSCC, proposed scheme benefits from iterative decoding of network
and channel codes, where there is an improvement of 5.25 dB in Eb /N0 for
achieving BER of 104 .
Thus, in this dissertation, it has been shown that iterative decoding principles ap-
plied to multiple description coding schemes result in improvement of reconstructed
image PSNR. It is also demonstrated through simulation that iterative soft decision
decoding techniques applied to network-channel coding schemes result in improve-
ment of BER performance. The proposed schemes has been compared to existing
165
schemes in literature and results obtained validate the superior performance of the
proposed schemes.
7.2 Future Work

In this section, a variety of research directions, future scope and possible extensions
of this thesis work are discussed.
1. Sum-product algorithm (SPA) is a preferred algorithms for decoding sparse

graph codes like LDPC codes over continuous output channels. But computa-
tional complexity of SPA for SISO decoding of RS codes in ABP algorithm is
very high due to the dense nature of parity check matrix of RS code. There-
fore, one could think of developing low complexity SISO decoding algorithm
for RS code and apply it in our iterative SISO decoder for FEC based MDC.
2. Optimum allocation of parity symbols in RS code for proposed iterative SISO

decoder for FEC based MDC remains a challenge. Parity levels of p RS code-
words needs to be optimized and it is dependent on error correction capability
of RSCC. But in iterative decoding scenario, error correction capability of
RSCC is dependent on the combined error correcting capability of p RS code-
words. This interdependence in error correction capabilities of both codes
make optimization difficult and is a challenging area for future research.
3. Our work in this dissertation on iterative source-channel decoding for MDC

can be extended to fading channel. SISO arithmetic decoders are very sen-
sitive to errors on fading channels and very little research has been done on
it. Therefore, further investigation need to be carried out to improve the ro-
bustness of SISO arithmetic decoder in fading channel and include in MDC
decoder.
******
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Authors Bio-data
Name : Saikat Majumder

Date of Birth : 20 November, 1982
Present Address : Department of Electronics & Telecommunication,
NIT Raipur, Chhattisgarh, India. PIN-492010
Permanent Address : Santir Bazar, South Tripura,
Tripura, India. PIN-799144
E-mail : smajumder.etc@nitrr.ac.in
Contact No. : +91 9424200516
Experience
Assistant Professor, August, 2008 to present

Department of Electronics & Telecommunication,
NIT Raipur.
Educational Qualifications
S. No Institute Degree Year
1. North Eastern Regional Institute B. Tech 2004
of Science & Technology (Electronics and Communication)
2. National Institute M.Tech (Electronics 2006
of Technology Calicut Design & Technology)
A-1
Publications and Outcomes
Articles in peer-reviewed journals
J1. [188] Saikat Majumder, Shrish Verma, Iterative Decoding of LDPC-RS Coded
FEC Based Multiple Description Coded Images . Communicated
J2. [189] Saikat Majumder, Shrish Verma, Three Stage Iterative Decoding of Dif-
ferential Space-time Coded FEC-based Multiple Descriptions . Communicated
J3. [172] Saikat Majumder, Shrish Verma, Iterative Channel Decoding of FEC-
Based Multiple Descriptions using LDPC-RS Product Codes . International
Journal of Applied Engineering Research, vol. 11, no. 9, 2016.
J4. [183] Saikat Majumder, Shrish Verma, Iterative Decoding of FEC-based Mul-
tiple Description Codes over Fading Channel and Opportunistic Relay Net-
works . International Journal of Applied Engineering Research, vol. 10, no.
19, 2015.
J5. [174] Saikat Majumder, Shrish Verma, Improved Iterative Decoding of Network-
Channel Codes for Multiple-Access Relay Channel . International Scholarly
Research Notices, vol. 2015, 2015.
J6. [175] Saikat Majumder, Shrish Verma, Iterative Network-Channel Decoding

with Cooperative Space-Time Transmission . International Journal of Ad hoc,
Sensor and Ubiquitous Computing, vol. 5, no. 6, December 2014.
J7. [169] Saikat Majumder, Shrish Verma, Iterative Soft Decoding of Multiple
Description Image over Iterative Soft Decoding of Multiple Description Image
A-2
A-3
over Wireless Channel . Journal of Computer and Communications, vol. 2014,

no. 2, 2014.
J8. [168] Saikat Majumder, Shrish Verma, Noise Robust Transmission of Mul-
tiple Description Image over Wireless Networks . International Journal of
Engineering Science and Technology, vol. 5, no. 11, 2013.
J9. [190] Saikat Majumder, Shrish Verma, Accumulator Aided Decoding of Low
Complexity SISO Arithmetic Codes with Image Transmission Application .
International Journal of Computer Applications, vol. 79, no. 7, 2013.
J10. [49] Saikat Majumder, Shrish Verma, Joint Channel Estimation and Decoding
of Raptor Code on Fading Channel . Indian Journal of Computer Science and
Engineering, vol. 4, no. 2, 2013.
Conference proceedings
C1. [170] Saikat Majumder, Shrish Verma, Iterative Decoding of FEC Based Mul-
tiple Description Codes for Image Transmission Over Wireless Channel . Pro-
ceedings of IEEE 21st National Conference on Communications (NCC 2015),
Feb. 27-March 1, Mumbai, 2015.
C2. [184] Saikat Majumder, Shrish Verma, Improved Decoding of Multiple De-
scription Codes over Wireless Broadcast Channels . Proceedings of Emerging
Research in Computing, Information, Communication and Applications (ER-
CICA 2014), 1-2 August, Bangalore, 2014.
C3. [22] Saikat Majumder, Shrish Verma, Joint Source-Channel Decoding of IRA
code for Hidden Markov Source . Proceedings of IEEE 1st Conference on
Recent Advances in Information Technology (RAIT 2012), Dhanbad, 2012.

On Iterative Decoding Schemes For Communication Over Wireless Channels

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On Iterative Decoding Schemes

for Communication over Wireless

NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY RAIPUR

Place: NIT, Raipur (Saikat Majumder)

Certificate by the Supervisor

1. Embodies the work of candidate himself.

2. Has duly been completed.

Signature of the Supervisor

(Shrish Verma, Ph.D.)

Place: NIT, Raipur (Saikat Majumder)

Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Concatenated coding schemes consist of the combination of two or more simple

Certificate by the Examiners

Internal Examiner External Examiner

Certificate by the Supervisor iii

Certificate by the Examiners viii

List of Figures xiv

List of Abbreviations and Symbols xx

1.4 Thesis Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

2 Background Overview and Related Work 16

3 Iterative Decoding of FEC Based Multiple Descriptions with Soft

3.3.3 Complexity Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

4 Iterative Decoding of FEC Based Multiple Descriptions with Hard

5 Iterative Soft Decision Source-Channel Decoding of Multiple De-

5.3.2 Performance of Iterative Source-Channel Decoding of Two

6 Iterative Decoding of Network-Channel Codes 126

7 Conclusions and Future Work 158

7.1.4 Iterative Decoding of Network-Channel Code . . . . . . . . . . 163

Authors Bio-data A-1

Publications and Outcomes A-3

1.1 Turbo encoder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

3.1 Two dimensional (2-D) arrangement of RS and RSCC codewords in

4.3 Comparison of PSNR performance as function of channel SNR for

5.1 Multiple description index assignment: (a) 2 diagonal staggered quan-

5.4 PER performance of the ACC-CC-AC system compared to baseline

5.18 Performance of proposed scheme (D = 2) for transmission over packet

6.12 Performance comparison with different channel codes at the user

1.1 Different serial concatenated systems with iterative decoding . . . . 8

3.1 Performance advantage of proposed scheme in AWGN channel. . . . . 63

4.1 Performance advantage of proposed scheme in Jakes fading channel

6.1 Transmission schedule at the user and relay nodes. . . . . . . . . . . 131

ABP Adaptive Belief Propagation

APP A posteriori probability

AWGN Additive White Gaussian Noise

BCJR Bahl-Cocke-Jelinek-Raviv algorithm

BER Bit Error Rate

BPSK Binary Phase Shift Keying

BSC Binary Symmetric Channel

COAF Coded Oppertunistic Amplify and Forward

CODF Coded Oppertunistic Decode and Forward

CRC Cyclic Redundancy Check

DSTBC Differential Space-Time Block Code

DWT Discrete wavelet transform

EREC Error Resilient Entropy Coding

EREC-ST EREC assisted by Start and Tail bits

EXIT Extrinsic information transfer

FEC Forward Error Correction

FLS Fixed Length Slot

ISCD Iterative Source-Channel Decoding

JPEG Joint Photographic Experts Group

JSCD Joint Source-Channel Decoding

LDPC Low-Density Parity Check

LLR Log likelihood ratio

Transmission energy per symbol