Robust Index Assignment for MDSQ Encoder Over
Noisy Channels
Rui Ma and Fabrice Labeau
Centre for Advanced Systems & Technologies in Communications (SYTACom)
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
McGill University
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Email: rui.ma@mail.mcgill.ca, fabrice.labeau@mcgill.ca
Abstract— Multiple description coding (MDC) can achieve
acceptable performance with only one single correct description,
and lower distortion of the source when more descriptions
are received correctly. In our previous work, we assumed that
because of noisy channel, bit errors were introduced into one
description, but the other one was received correctly. Based on
this assumption, an enhanced central decoder has been proposed
to utilize the residual information between the corrupted and the
correct description to reduce the distortion of the reconstructed
signals. In this paper, a novel index assignment algorithm for mul-
tiple description scalar quantizer (MDSQ) encoder is developed
to improve the error detection capability of the central decoder.
Genetic algorithm (GA) is used to search for a suboptimal
solution. The experimental results show that within a range of
bit error rates (BERs), the proposed algorithm provides lower
reconstruction distortion than the conventional MDSQ [1].
I. I NTRODUCTION
As demonstrated in Fig. 1, a multiple description coding
(MDC) system can achieve acceptable performance by re-
ceiving only one description, and lower distortion with more
descriptions. MDC has been exploited (e.g. [2]) to transmit
images in the presence of channel failure or packet loss. In
the classical MDC system, all channels are assumed as on/off,
i.e., data is either received correctly or lost completely [1].
However, source data are encapsulated into packets to transmit
over Internet. By using simple checksum, the errors of a
packet can be detected. Thus, it is possible that one packet
of a pair, which are from two descriptions respectively, is
incorrect, but another is correct. With the help of correct
packets and the residual information in error packets, we
proposed an enhanced central decoder in [3], shown in Fig. 2,
to achieve higher error tolerance and lower distortion than
the conventional central receivers. In this paper, we develop a
novel index assignment (IA) approach for the MDC system,
so that higher ability of error detection and, further, lower
reconstruction distortion can be accomplished by cooperating
with the enhanced central decoder.
Index assignment (IA) can be seen as a class of combi-
natorial optimization problems that are usually referred to as
the class of NP-complete problems. Heuristic algorithms are
widely used to find a “good” or “close-to-optimal” solution
for these problems, since the complexity of exhaustive search
becomes prohibitively high when the problem size is large.
Channel 1
Side
Receiver 1
Multiple
Source Description Central
User
Receiver 0
Encoder
Channel 2
Side
Receiver 2
Fig. 1. Architecture of an MDC system with two channels and three receivers.
Most heuristic algorithms perform a deterministic search in a
set of admissible configurations and often terminate in a local
minimum.
Robust IA has been widely studied in the area of vector
quantization (VQ) against noisy channels. The typical design
methods include robust vector quantizer (RVQ) [4] [5] and
channel-optimized vector quantizer (COVQ) [6]. An RVQ
encoder is trained for an error-free channel and designed
to be robust by assigning proper indices to the codewords.
The RVQ is usually used under the circumstances where
codebook training time is of primary concern. In [4], the Bi-
nary Switching Algorithm (BSA) for locally optimal pseudo-
Gray coding was developed to reduce the expected signal
distortion caused by bit errors. By applying Gray coding,
zero redundancy error control was developed in optimizing
IA to minimize the average signal distortion. The authors
of [5] studied parametric modeling of the channel by using
Fritchman channel model and IA to achieve a VQ with high
robustness against channel errors. A genetic algorithm (GA)
was applied to find a suboptimal IA to minimize the distortion
introduced by bit errors. The experimental results showed
that GA helped to find a more accurate and more consistent
solution than BSA and simulated annealing (SA).
The encoder-decoder pair in a COVQ system is jointly
trained according to a given channel with a certain BER. The
COVQ is more suitable when higher reliability is needed. A
method of designing COVQ was proposed in [6]. As a step
of this method, SA was applied to find a “good” solution
for IA. The experimental results showed that a COVQ could
obtain higher degree of robustness than RVQ depending on
the practical situation and the active channel characteristics.
Without extra redundancy, the performance of an appropriate Description 2
COVQ was close to that of unequal error protection (UEP).
Error Detector
Furthermore, a COVQ did not bring extra complexity and
delay compared with a conventional source encoder followed Estimator
by a channel code.
The method of IA in MDSQ was first described in [1]. Description 1 Central Decoder User

A method of assigning code words over more than two

channels was developed in [7]. The authors of [8] presented a
practically feasible algorithm to find optimal IA of an multiple Fig. 2. Architecture of proposed central receiver.
description vector quantizer (MDVQ) with an arbitrary number
of descriptions. In [9], a SA-based method was proposed to column ( j )
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
obtain the optimal IA for an MDVQ. An IA method for
two channels was proposed in [10] to obtain well balanced 0 0 2 5

index pairs. The above existing works on IA in an MDC 1 1 4 6 8

system focus on how to achieve well balanced or optimized 2 3 7 9 11 13

multiple description quantizers. They only considered the
conventional on/off channel models and did not try to improve
the performance of the MDC system over noisy channels.
Here, we propose a novel method to find a feasible solution for
MDSQ, instead of MDVQ, to reduce the distortion introduced
by noisy channel.
From the results in [3], we inferred that if the capability of
error detection was higher, the reconstructed distortion of the
enhanced central decoder could be reduced further. Therefore,
here, we propose a new method to assign index pairs for the
MDC system, in particular, MDSQ or MDVQ, so as to achieve
higher ability to detect errors. This IA approach attempts to
re-assign 2b-bit binary code words to N (N < 22b ) index
pairs, each of which is a b-bit code word, in order to increase
the minimum Hamming distance, dmin , between any binary
index pairs. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the
first try to achieve robustness against bit errors by using IA in
the MDC system. Without introducing extra redundancy such
as channel coding, this kind of scheme utilizes the inherent
redundancy to improve the capability of error detection and,
furthermore, reduce the distortion of the reconstructed signals
by exploiting the enhanced central decoder at the meantime.
This work will be presented in the following sections. At
first, as the preliminary part, the enhanced central decoder, op-
timal and suboptimal solutions [3] are reviewed in Section II.
The proposed method of assigning index pairs is discussed in
Section III, which is followed by the experimental results and
conclusion.
II. E NHANCED C ENTRAL D ECODER
A. Model of Enhanced Central Decoder
In order to utilize residual information of the corrupted de-
scription, we proposed an enhanced central decoder, illustrated
in Fig. 2, for an MDC system [3]. Here we assume that one
channel (Description 2) suffers noise that results in bit errors;
meanwhile, another description (Description 1) is received
correctly. By referring to Description 1, errors in Description 2
are detected and, then, the outputs are estimated.
MDSQ is used as an example to explain how this central
encoder works. Redundancy is involved when decomposing
a scalar quantization index into two indices in MDSQ. As
row ( i )
3 10 12 14 16 19
4 15 18 21 24
5 17 20 23 26 27
6 22 25 28 30
7 29 31
Fig. 3. MLIA [1] at (3, 2, 32).
illustrated in Fig. 3, we use the modified linear (ML) IA [1] as
the example of IA in MDSQ. In MLIA, in order to encode the
source at b bits/source sample (bpss) on each channel, N index
pairs are selected from the main diagonal and the 2k diagonals
closest to the main diagonals of a 2b ×2b IA matrix. Then each
ML implementation is defined by (b, k, N ). In Fig. 3, index 0
is decomposed into (0, 0), and 2 as (0, 1). At the same time,
many combinations are still not occupied, such as (5, 1). We
exploit this property to detect errors. For example, if (5, 1) is
received under the assumption that Description 1 is right and
Description 2 incurs some errors, 1 is determined as an error.
Then we choose the most probable output value by using the
methods described in the next subsection to minimize the extra
distortion caused by errors.
B. Error Estimation
We consider real-valued data samples x ∈ R, that are
encoded to an index l through the quantizer function q(x) = l.
There are N possible quantizer output interval indices l, and
we will denote by N the set of these indices. The correspond-
ing code words or reproduction levels are denoted by cl , and
they are chosen here as the centroids of the corresponding
△ R
quantization cell vl : cl = vl xfX (x)dx, where fX (x) is
the input probability density function (pdf). These indices
l ∈ N are then mapped to a pair of indices (i, j) through an
index mapping operator a(·). Referring to Fig. 3, the indices l
appear in the matrix, whereas i and j are the row and column
numbers, respectively. We refer to the two components of
the mapping as i = a(1) (l) and j = a(2) (l). Finally, the
inverse mapping, which can be deduced, e.g., from Fig. 3, is
denoted by l = a−1 (i, j). We also denote the centroids of the
(1) (2)
quantizers in each description as ci and cj . The received
indices are denoted by î and ĵ; the corresponding output x̂
is the reproduction level is ea−1 (î,ĵ) , not necessarily the same
as the quantizer reproduction level ca−1 (î,ĵ) ; when only one
description is received, the corresponding output x̂ is eî
(1)
(2)
eĵ .In the case of a correct reception of two descriptions, the
reproduced value is thus x̂ = ea−1 (a(1) (q(x)),a(2) (q(x))) .
The MSE between two real values is denoted by d(·, ·); we
△ (RMDSQ) consists of three stages:
also denote the set of possible indices i as I = {i ∈ N : ∃l ∈
N , j ∈ N : a(l) = (i, j)}, and the set of all possible indices j
△
as J = {j ∈ N : ∃l ∈ N , i ∈ N : a(l) = (i, j)}. For a given
△
i ∈ I, we also define the set J¯i = {j ∈ J :6 ∃l ∈ N : a(l) =
(i, j)}, which is the set of values of the second index j that
does not lead to a possible (i, j) pair in the index mapping
matrix. For example, in Fig. 3, at the second row or column,
J¯1 = {4, 5, 6, 7}.
We consider two types of transmission errors: those that our
error detector can detect, and those that remain undetectable.
The overall distortion caused by transmission errors, De , is
given by
De = Du + Dd ,
P P
where DP e = l∈N Pq (l)De (l), Du = l∈N Pq (l)Du (l),
Dd = l∈N P q (l)D d (l). P q (l) = P {x ∈ vl } is the
probability of the input falling in cell l, De (l), Du (l) and
Dd (l) are the expected distortion from inputs in cell l due
respectively to all, undetectable and detectable transmission
errors. A transmission error can be detected as long as ĵ ∈ J¯î .
Our goal is now to find the best possible reconstruction
(1) (2)
levels el̂ , eî or eĵ in order to minimize De . When an
index pair (i, j) is transmitted, the corresponding received pair
is (î, ĵ). For a transmission error, we assume without losing
generality that only Description 1 is received correctly, i.e.,
î = i and ĵ 6= j. Two methods were proposed to estimate the
outputs of error index pairs to decrease Dd , respectively:
1) Optimal: Assuming that
the a-priori source probabilities
Pq (l) or Pq a−1 (i, j) are known at the receiver end,
the output value of the error index pair is calculated by:
Pq a−1 (i, j) Ped (ĵ|j) ca−1 (i,j)
P P

(1) j∈J ĵ∈J¯i
eiopt = .
Pq (a−1 (i, j)) Ped (ĵ|j)
P P
j∈J ĵ∈J¯i
(2)
2) Suboptimal: the output value of the error index pair is
replaced by:
(1) (1)
eisub ≈ ci .
The suboptimal method achieved very close performance to
the optimal with lower computational complexity and without
source statistics and channel knowledge (see [3] for more
details).
III. D ESIGN M ETHOD FOR A ROBUST MDSQ
According to the algorithm described above, if a received
code words is judged as non-existing, an error code word is
found by the decoder. Then we utilize the estimation value to
reduce the distortion introduced by the errors. So the higher
or error detection capability is, the less distortion is introduced
by using our algorithm. In order to improve the capability
of error detection, we design a new IA scheme to enlarge
the minimum Hamming distance dmin between any two code
words. The overall procedure of designing a robust MDSQ
1) Searching for qualified index pairs (i, j) within a 2b ×2b
IA matrix based on dmin between binary representations
of code words.
2) Assigning indices ls to the selected index pairs (i, j) in
order to minimize the cost function(s).
3) In the terms of the algorithm provided in [1], deter-
mining the corresponding MDSQ that adapts to source
statistics with balanced side distortions.
In the following subsections, we will describe the algorithms
for Step 1) and 2), respectively. As for the algorithm for
Step 3), it is the same as what was described in [1].
(1)
A. Searching for qualified index pairs
In MDSQ, especially, two descriptions, the original indices
of scalar quantizer are decomposed into index pairs (i, j). Let
i and j denote as the binary representation of i and j, respec-
tively, i.e., i = [i0 , i1 , · · · , ib−1 ] and j = [j0 , j1 , · · · , jb−1 ] are
two binary b-tuples, where ik , jk = 1 or 0, k = 0, 1, · · · , b−1.
We combine i and j in any sequence to form a code word w,
that is to say, w = [i, j] = [i0 , i1 , · · · , ib−1 , j0 , j1 , · · · , jb−1 ].
Let C be the set of all possible code words w, i.e., C =
{0, 1}2b . In order to achieve robustness to bit errors, we are
going to find a set of the code words W, in which dmin
between any two code words should be not less than a certain
value, in C, i.e., W = {w ∈ C : ∀v ∈ W, v 6= w, kv − wk ≥
dmin }, where kv − wk represents Hamming distance between
v and w. So the number of code words w ∈ W is N , and kwk
represents the Hamming weight of w.
For given b and dmin , we search C to find a satisfactory W.
The searching algorithm is described in Table I.
B. IA by using genetic algorithm
IA is a kind of permutation problem, in particular, an
NP-complete problem. For W with  N code  words, the total
(3) N
number of possible combinations is = N2 ! . For N =
2
32, the total number of possible combinations is 1.32 × 1035 .
We apply generic algorithm (GA) to find a “close-to-optimal”
solution.
First, we describe the cost function for evaluating the found
 TABLE I column ( j ) column ( j )
A LGORITHM TO SEARCH QUALIFIED CODE WORDS 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
0 0 12 10 13 9

1 1 30 26 29 22
w0 ← 0 2 2 31 28 24 21

row ( i )

row ( i )
v ← w0 3 3 15 6 14 5

k←0 4 4 25 18 20 16

5 5 7 3 4 0
FOR each v ∈ C
6 6 8 1 11 2
v ← wk + 1 7 7 27 23 19 17

FOR each v ∈ C AND kv − wt k < dmin , ∀t, t = 0, · · · , k

v←v+1
END (a) (b)
IF v ∈ C
Fig. 4. Robust IA: (a) gray cells correspond to the selected index pairs. (b)
k ←k+1
achieved IA with the maximum spread 11.
wk ← v
END
END 4) By using the midpoint of each parent chromosome as the
N ←k crossover point, exchange the values of k-th and (N −
k − 1)-th genes to generate the offspring chromosomes.
For example, if the parent chromosome is [1, 3, 2, 0], the
solutions in each generation (iteration). Let offspring chromosome is [0, 2, 3, 1].
(1)
lmax (i) = max a−1 (i, j), (4) 5) Keep the best chromosome as the elitism that is not
j mutated. Randomly select chromosomes and exchange
(1) the values of gene pairs chosen randomly within a
lmin (i) = min a−1 (i, j), (5)
j chromosome.
(2)
lmax (j) = max a−1 (i, j), (6) 6) Go to Step 2) until the pre-determined number of
i
(2)
generations is reached.
lmin (j) = min a−1 (i, j). (7)
i
IV. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS
(m) (m) (m)
The spread s (n) is defined as s (n) = − lmax (n) The MLIA scheme based on the algorithm of [1] is shown
(m)
lmin (n) + 1, m = 1, 2. We use the maximum spread smax in Fig. 3. An example of the proposed IA scheme is shown in
as the metric that is given by Fig. 4. Figure 4(a) is the result of the algorithm described in
Section III-A. The gray cells correspond to the selected index
smax = max s(m) (n), (8) pairs with dmin = 2. A solution of IA is found by using the
m,n
algorithm provided in Section III-B as illustrated in Fig. 4(b).
where n = 0, 1, · · · , b − 1, m = 1, 2. The target of this The maximum spread is 11 that is equal to the maximum
algorithm is to find a solution with the “close-to-minimum” spread of Fig. 3. In the implementation of this GA algorithm,
smax at an acceptable expense, i.e., a certain number of Npop = 1024, and 1000 generations are produced. For each
generations. For example, in Fig. 3, associated with j = 3, generation, we mutate 1% of the total number of genes. In
(2) (2)
lmax (3) = 17, lmin (3) = 8, so s(2) (3) = 10. terms of the selected IA scheme shown in Fig. 4(b), a robust
The genetic algorithm (GA) is an optimization and search encoder of MDSQ is developed based on the design algorithm
technique based on the principles of genetics and natural provided in [1]. Bit errors are generated uniformly.
evolution [11]. The GA provides attractive results when tra- The experimental results by applying the IA scheme as
ditional optimization approaches fail. It uses a population Fig. 4(b) are plotted in Fig. 5 and noted as RMDSQ. On
with many chromosomes (individuals) to evolve according to the purpose of comparison, the performance of the existing
certain selection rules so as to minimize the cost function. method and the conventional MDSQ is shown. In the existing
Each generation of population has Npop chromosomes. Each work [12], the output values of the non-existed index pairs
chromosome is a possible combination of all N indices l, were replaced by the mean of the source. As the example of the
which are called genes in this context, over W selected conventional MDSQ [1], MLIA, illustrated in Fig. 3, is used
by using the algorithm provided in Table I. The searching and noted as MDSQ. For each case of RMDSQ and MDSQ, the
algorithm is described as follows: curves, which correspond to the existing method, optimal and
1) Initializing the first generation. The genes of the first suboptimal solutions with bit errors, the central distortion and
generation are random integers between 0 and N − 1. the side distortion without bit errors, accordingly, are drawn,
Each gene appears in a chromosome once and only once. and denoted as mean, optimal, suboptimal, central distortion
2) Evaluating and sorting the chromosomes according to and side distortion.
increasing smax . The best chromosome is the one with The curves of MDSQ in Fig. 5 show that by only exploiting
the minimum value of smax . our enhanced central decoder, the reconstructed distortion is
3) The best 50% chromosomes are chosen as the parents. decreased up to 2.5 dB from mean (MDSQ). Combining with
 [2] S. D. Servetto, K. Ramchandran, V. A. Vaishampayan, and K. Nahrstedt,
“Multiple description wavelet based image coding,” IEEE Trans. Image
−5 Processing, vol. 9, no. 5, pp. 813 – 826, May 2000.
[3] R. Ma and F. Labeau, “Enhanced multiple description decoder for error-
prone channels,” 2006, accepted by ICIP ’06.
[4] K. Zeger and A. Gersho, “Pseudo-gray coding,” IEEE Trans. Commun.,
vol. 38, no. 12, pp. 2147–2158, Dec. 1990.
−10 [5] W.-W. Chang, T.-H. Tan, and D.-Y. Wang, “Robust vector quantization
for wireless channels,” IEEE J. on Selected Areas in Commun., vol. 19,
central distortion (RMDSQ)
no. 7, pp. 1365–1373, July 2001.
[6] N. Farvardin, “A study of vector quantization for noisy channels,” IEEE
MSE (dB)

side distortion (RMDSQ)

mean (RMDSQ)
Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 36, no. 4, pp. 799–809, July 1990.
−15 optimal (RMDSQ)
[7] T. Y. Berger-Wolf and E. M. Reingold, “Index assignment for multichan-
nel communication under failure,” IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 48,
suboptimal (RMDSQ)
no. 10, pp. 2656–2668, Oct. 2002.
central distortion (MDSQ)
[8] N. Görtz and P. Leelapornchai, “Optimization of the index assignments
side distortion (MDSQ)
for multiple description vector quantizers,” IEEE Trans. Commun.,
mean (MDSQ)
−20 vol. 51, no. 3, pp. 336–340, March 2003.
optimal (MDSQ)
[9] P. Yahampath, “On index assignment and the design of multiple descrip-
suboptimal (MDSQ)
tion quantizers,” in Proc. of ICASSP ’04, vol. 4, 17-21 May 2004, pp.
iv–597 – iv–600.
[10] J. Balogh and J. A. Csirik, “Index assignment for two-channel quanti-
−25 zation,” IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 50, no. 11, pp. 2737–2751,
November 2004.
0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3
BER [11] R. L. Haupt and S. E. Haupt, Practical Genetic Algorithms, 2nd ed.
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2004.
[12] J. Barros, J. Hagenauer, and N. Gortz, “Turbo cross decoding of multiple
Fig. 5. Simulation results: curves of MDSQ are plotted based on MLIA
descriptions,” in Proc. of ICC ’02, 2002, pp. 1398–1402.
scheme in [1] at (3, 2, 32); curves of RMDSQ are plotted based on the
proposed IA scheme.

the encoder proposed here, the distortion of the reconstructed

signals is furthermore reduced up to 2.7 dB in the range
of interest, where BER < 25%. We use the BER, at which
the reconstruction distortion of the central decoder reaches
the corresonding side distortion, to measure error tolerance.
Then the error tolerance incrases from 9%, to 16%, and then
25%, accordingly. The reason of this gain is that because of
dmin = 2 in our IA scheme, all seperate one-bit errors can
be detected and estimated. On the contrary, dmin = 1 in the
conventional IA schemes, thus some of one-bit errors cannot
be detected. As BER increases further, two- and more-than-
two-bit errors appear more frequently, so the advantages of the
proposed encoder decrease. Even though the central distortions
of MDSQ and RMDSQ are very close, the slightly higher side
distortion of our scheme can be seen as the expense of the
improvement.
V. C ONCLUSION
Based on the enhanced central decoder and error estima-
tion algorithms, we propose an IA algorithm to improve the
capability of error detection. Furthermore, a robust encoder
of MDSQ is developed, so that the corresponding multiple
description decoder can detect more errors and estimate the
values of the error index pairs. The experimental results
indicate that compared with the conventional IA scheme, the
distortion of the reconstructed signals is reduced by applying
the proposed algorithm. As the future work, we will make use
of this scheme in multimedia applications, such as image and
video transmissions.
R EFERENCES
[1] V. A. Vaishampayan, “Design of multiple description scalar quantizers,”
IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 39, no. 3, pp. 821–834, May 1993.