Fair Numerical Algorithm of Coset Cardinality Spectrum for Distributed Arithmetic Coding

Abstract

As a typical symbol-wise solution of asymmetric Slepian-Wolf coding problem, Distributed Arithmetic Coding (DAC) non-linearly partitions source space into disjoint cosets with unequal sizes. The distribution of DAC coset cardinalities, named the Coset Cardinality Spectrum (CCS), plays an important role in both theoretical understanding and decoder design for DAC. In general, CCS cannot be calculated directly. Instead, a numerical algorithm is usually used to obtain an approximation. This paper first finds that the contemporary numerical algorithm of CCS is theoretically imperfect and does not finally converge to the real CCS. Further, to solve this problem, we refine the original numerical algorithm based on rigorous theoretical analyses. Experimental results verify that the refined numerical algorithm amends the drawbacks of the original version.