CIF: Small: Collaborative Research: A New Approach to Joint Source-Channel Coding

香农的信源信道分离定理指出，通过“比特”的通用数字接口分离信源编码器（压缩器/解压缩器）和信道编码器（纠错编码器/解码器）对于单个数据源的点对点通信是最佳的。虽然这种模块化的设计原则，启发了今天的通信系统的基本架构，它是优于更复杂的“联合”源信道编码器的通信多个来源在网络上-在今天的爆炸性的需求和供应的分布式信息源的一项重要任务。与此同时，许多新兴的应用程序涉及计算来自多个节点的数据摘要，做出协调决策，并在这些节点之间执行联合操作，而不仅仅是通信源。这项研究建立了一个混合信源信道编码架构，这些应用是简单的香农的分离架构，但实现了更大的改善性能。新的体系结构将最终导致发现实用的算法，用于分布式计算，感知，决策和网络协调。具体来说，本研究重点关注并开发新的方法来解决以下问题：1）用于在多用户信道上传送相关源的混合编码（用于联合信源信道编码的统一方法），2）用于网络通信的混合编码（基于联合信源信道编码的新中继方案），3）混合编码的实现问题（设计同时是好的信道码和好的源代码的实用码），以及4）用于性能分析和码设计的数学框架（当码本和消息纠缠时的信息理论工具）。

Shannon's source-channel separation theorem states that separating the source coder (compressor/decompressor) and the channel coder (error correction coder/decoder) via the universal digital interface of 'bits' is optimal for point-to-point communication of a single data source. While this modular design principle has inspired the basic architecture for most of today's communication systems, it is outperformed by more complex 'joint' source-channel coders for communication of multiple sources over networks---an important task in today's explosive demand and supply of distributed information sources. At the same time, many emerging applications involve computing a summary of data from multiple nodes, making a coordinated decision, and performing a joint action among these nodes, rather than merely communicating sources. This research establishes a hybrid source-channel coding architecture for these applications that is as simple as Shannon's separation architecture, yet achieves much improved performance. The new architecture will eventually lead to the discovery of practical algorithms for distributed computation, sensing, decision making, and coordination over networks.Specifically, this research focuses on and develops new approaches for tackling the following problems: 1) hybrid coding for communicating correlated sources over multiuser channels (a unified approach for joint source-channel coding), 2) hybrid coding for network communication (a new relaying scheme based on joint source-channel coding), 3) implementation issues for hybrid coding (design of a practical code that is a good channel code and a good source code simultaneously), and 4) a mathematical framework for performance analysis and code design (information theoretic tools when the codebook and the message are entangled).