An optimal distributed and adaptive source coding strategy using rate-compatible punctured convolutional codes

A novel scheme exploiting rate-compatible punctured convolutional (RCPC) codes is proposed for distributed and adaptive source coding. The proposed scheme is based on the SF-ISF approach in (Z. Tu et al., Eurasip J. Appl. SigPro. - Special Iss. on Turbo Proc.). It is simple, general, flexible, and provenly optimal. For the class of RCPC codes that are obtained from puncturing the parity bits of a recursive systematic convolutional (RSC) mother code, it is shown that an "optimal" codec exists where a single source encoder and a single source decoder can accomodate a set of different compression rates efficiently.