  Distributed source coding schemes are typically based on the use of channels
codes as source codes. In this paper we propose a new paradigm, termed
"distributed arithmetic coding", which exploits the fact that arithmetic codes
are good source as well as channel codes. In particular, we propose a
distributed binary arithmetic coder for Slepian-Wolf coding with decoder side
information, along with a soft joint decoder. The proposed scheme provides
several advantages over existing Slepian-Wolf coders, especially its good
performance at small block lengths, and the ability to incorporate arbitrary
source models in the encoding process, e.g. context-based statistical models.
We have compared the performance of distributed arithmetic coding with turbo
codes and low-density parity-check codes, and found that the proposed approach
has very competitive performance.
