Reliability of Digital Communication System with Channel Redundancy

Communication reliability, which is impaired by noise, can be enhanced by introducing redundancy to the data stream. Highly redundant data streams involve complex coding and decoding techniques. An alternative approach is to use simple coding schemes in conjunction with channel redundancy. In this way, the decoding complexity is marginally increased. Performances of systems having both channel and data redundancy are investigated. A reliability vs. cost plot is obtained for a simple model. The results indicate that it may be more economical to transmit data over two inferior channels than over one high quality channel.