Zero-Error Source-Channel Coding With Side Information

We consider coding for transmission of a source through a channel without error when the receiver has side information about the source. We show that separate source and channel coding is asymptotically suboptimal in general. By contrast, in the case of vanishingly small probability of error, separate source and channel coding is known to be asymptotically optimal. For the zero-error case, we show further that the joint coding gain can in fact be unbounded. Since separate coding simplifies code design and use, we also derive conditions on sources and channels for the optimality of separate coding. J. Nayak and K. Rose are with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106. Email: {jayanth,rose}@ece.ucsb.edu E. Tuncel is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of California, Riverside, California 92521. Email: [email protected]