Multiple Description Coding with Multiple Transmit and Receive Antennas for Wireless Channels: The Case of Digital Modulation

Abstract—An effective way of providing error resilience with a relatively small reduction in compression ratio is multiple description coding (MDC). All multiple description codes to date assume the existence of multiple independent “on-off” channels between the transmitter and receiver. Each link is either broken in which case the symbols or packets are completely lost, or it functions properly, in which case symbols are received free of errors. This channel model is appropriate for wireline networks, such as the Internet, it may not be applicable to other commonly used channels such as wireless channels. In this paper, we replace the parallel independent on-off channel model with wireless channel models such as a Rayleigh fading model. We also communicate using multiple transmit and receive antennas over the channel. Furthermore, we use digital bandpass modulation to transmit the source symbols. Keywords—Multiple description coding (MDC), Rayleigh fading, source and space diversity, joint source-channel coding, wireless systems.