Fountain capacity

Shlomo Shamai, I. Emre Telatar, Sergio Verdú

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

23 Scopus citations

Abstract

Fountain codes are currently employed for reliable and efficient transmission of information via erasure channels with unknown erasure rates. This correspondence introduces the notion of fountain capacity for arbitrary channels. In contrast to the conventional definition of rate, in the fountain setup the definition of rate penalizes the reception of symbols by the receiver rather than their transmission. Fountain capacity measures the maximum rate compatible with reliable reception regardless of the erasure pattern. We show that fountain capacity and Shannon capacity are equal for stationary memoryless channels. In contrast, Shannon capacity may exceed fountain capacity if the channel has memory or is not stationary.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)4372-4376
Number of pages5
JournalIEEE Transactions on Information Theory
Volume53
Issue number11
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 2007

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Information Systems
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Library and Information Sciences

Keywords

  • Arbitrarily varying channels
  • Channel capacity
  • Content distribution
  • Erasure channels
  • Fountain codes

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Fountain capacity'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this