An Extended DISCUS Scheme for Distributed Source Coding in Wireless Sensor Networks

In this paper, the design and construction methods of the DISCUS (distributed source coding using syndromes) scheme in wireless sensor networks are analyzed. The encoder quantizes the continuous outputs of the source and calculates the syndromes of the source codewords. Only the syndromes are transmitted to the decoder. The decoder combines the received syndromes and the side information to reconstruct the original source information. Some modifications are adopted to refine the shortages of the original DISCUS scheme, called extended DISCUS (eDISCUS). Firstly, the decoding error on the most significant bit is corrected. Secondly, the simple mapping from decimal quantization levels to binary codebook is replaced by a Gray-like code. Thirdly, additional syndromes are transmitted to correctly decode all the single codeword error. Simulation results show that the modifications have better decoding error rate and distortion performances