Analog Joint Source-Channel Coding (JSCC) is a communication strategy that does not follow the separation principle of conventional digital systems but approaches the optimal distortion-cost tradeoff over AWGN channels. Conventional Maximum Likelihood (ML) analog JSCC decoding schemes suffer performance degradation at low Channel Signal to Noise Ratio (CSNR) values, while Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE) decoding presents high complexity. In this letter we propose an alternative two step decoding approach which achieves the near-optimal performance of MMSE decoding at all CSNR values while maintaining a low complexity comparable to that of ML decoding. An additional advantage of the proposed analog JSCC decoding approach is that it can also be used in Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) fading channels.

Low Density Generator Matrix (LDGM) codes are a particular class of Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes with very low encoding complexity. Single LDGM codes present high error-floors, which can be substantially reduced with the serial concatenation of two LDGM (SCLDGM) codes. We propose a technique to obtain good SCLDGM codes using EXtrinsic Information Transfer (EXIT) functions in a novel way. Although the optimization is performed for AWGN channels with binary signaling, the resulting codes are also optimal for AWGN and perfectly-interleaved Rayleigh fading channels with non-binary signaling and perfect CSI at reception, provided that Gray mapping is utilized. Optimized regular and irregular SCLDGM codes outperform heuristically-designed LDGM codes existing in the literature, and have a performance similar to or better than that of Irregular Repeat Accumulate (IRA) codes.

Inductive Loop Detectors (ILDs) are the most commonly used sensors in traffic management systems. This paper shows that some spectral features extracted from the Fourier Transform (FT) of inductive signatures do not depend on the vehicle speed. Such a property is used to propose a novel method for vehicle classification based on only one signature acquired from a sensor single-loop, in contrast to standard methods using two sensor loops. Our proposal will be evaluated by means of real inductive signatures captured with our hardware prototype.

Analog joint source-channel coding (JSCC) is a communication strategy that does not follow the separation principle of conventional digital systems but has been shown to approach the optimal distortion-cost tradeoff over additive white Gaussian noise channels. In this work, we investigate the feasibility of analog JSCC over multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) fading channels. Since, due to complexity constraints, directly recovering the analog source information from the MIMO channel output is not possible, we propose the utilization of low-complexity two-stage receivers that separately perform detection and analog JSCC maximum likelihood decoding. We study analog JSCC MIMO receivers that utilize either linear minimum mean square error or decision feedback MIMO detection. Computer experiments show the ability of the proposed analog JSCC receivers to approach the optimal distortion-cost tradeoff both in the low and high channel signal-to-noise ratio regimes. Performance is analyzed over both synthetically computer-generated Rayleigh fading channels and real indoor wireless measured channels.

Recently, analog joint source-channel coding has been proposed as a means of achieving near-optimum performance for high data rates with a very low complexity. However, no experimental evaluation showing the practical feasibility of this scheme has been performed to date. In this paper, we describe a software-defined radio implementation of an analog joint source-channel coded wireless transmission system. Experimental evaluation carried out in an indoor environment making use of a wireless testbed shows that the performance perfectly matches that originally reported by simulations in Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) channels for signal-to-noise ratio values below 20 dB.