Distributed Joint Source-Channel-Network Coding Exploiting Source Correlation for Multiple Access Relay Channel

Abstract:
In this paper, we consider the problem of transmitting correlated binary sources over multiple access relay channel (MARC). The network consists of two sources communicating with the same destination with the assistance of a single relay. The source sequences are independently channel encoded and broadcasted to the relay and the destination. After successfully receiving the information sequences from the two sources, the relay generates joint channel-network coded sequence and forwards it to the destination. A joint source-channel-network (JSCN) decoding technique is proposed to fully exploit the correlation between the sources, as well as the benefit of network coding. Furthermore, the achievable rate region and the theoretical limits of this system are derived by combining the Shannon and source coding with side information theorems. Simulation results show that, by exploiting the source correlation, our proposed technique achieves significant performance gain, compared with the case that the correlation knowledge is not exploited.