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Conditions to apply Source Coding Theorem

Submitted by: @import:stackexchange-cs··
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Problem

I was wondering what are the conditions to apply source coding theorem (SCT).

  1. Is it applied only to uniform-length coding, what about variable-length coding, does it also satisfy SCT?



I was asking because in my lecture, SCT is only discussed in uniform coding section.

  1. Is the result of SCT for uniquely decodable coding or is it for lossless coding?



In Wikipedia SCT, it's said $f$ is unique decodable code, then we have SCT. In my lecture, it gives me an impression that SCT is generally applied to all lossless coding.

Solution

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It is an average in bits/symbol and does apply to all coding schemes.

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You're correct, the number of bits/symbol needed is equal or larger than the entropy rate (asymptotically, though) of the source for any lossless code.

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If you allow for lossy coding, then a generalization called rate-distortion function is needed to lower bound the rate required.

Context

StackExchange Computer Science Q#83222, answer score: 2

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