Joint source/channel coding and MAP decoding of arithmetic codes

In this paper, a novel maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation approach is employed for error correction of arithmetic codes with a forbidden symbol. The system is founded on the principle of joint source channel coding, which allows one to unify the arithmetic decoding and error correction tasks into a single process, with superior performance compared to traditional separated techniques. The proposed system improves the performance in terms of error correction with respect to a separated source and channel coding approach based on convolutional codes, with the additional great advantage of allowing complete flexibility in adjusting the coding rate. The proposed MAP decoder is tested in the case of image transmission across the additive white Gaussian noise channel and compared against standard forward error correction techniques in terms of performance and complexity. Both hard and soft decoding are taken into account, and excellent results in terms of packet error rate and decoded image quality are obtained.