Source-channel erasure codes with lattice codebooks for multiple description coding

It was recently shown that a subset of the rate distortion region of the symmetric K-channel multiple description coding problem can be achieved by use of (K, k) source-channel erasure codes (SCEC). The construction of the previously proposed SCEC made use of source coding with side information and relied upon random codebooks. In this paper we propose to replace the random codebooks of (K, k) SCEC by structured (lattice) codebooks. We then show that, in certain cases and under high-resolution assumptions, this improves the achievable rate distortion region over the traditional (K, k) SCEC.