Polar codes for multiple descriptions

A coding scheme based on polar codes is proposed for the multiple description problem. This scheme is an adaptation of the one developed by ŗaşoğlu et al. for the multiple access channel to the multiple description setting. Specifically, it is shown that the proposed scheme is able to achieve a certain rate pair on the dominant line of the achievable rate region determined by El Gamal and Cover. Due to the dependence between the descriptions, a complication arises in the performance analysis. To resolve this difficulty, a novel technique is introduced which converts dependent descriptions to independent descriptions without affecting the coding rates.