Finite-Support Capacity-Approaching Distributions for AWGN Channels
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In this paper, the Dynamic-Assignment Blahut-Arimoto (DAB) algorithm identifies finite-support probability mass functions (PMFs) with small cardinality that achieve capacity for amplitude-constrained (AC) Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) Channels, or approach capacity to within less than 1 power-constrained (PC) AWGN Channels. While a continuous Gaussian PDF is well-known to be a theoretical capacity-achieving distribution for the PC-AWGN channel, DAB identifies PMFs with small-cardinality that are, for practical purposes, indistinguishable in performance. We extend the results of Ozarow and Wyner that require a constellation cardinality of 2^C+1 to approach capacity C to within the shaping loss. PMF's found by DAB approach capacity with essentially no shaping loss with constellation cardinality of 2^C+1.2. For AC-AWGN channels, DAB characterizes the evolution of minimum-cardinality finite-support capacity-achieving PMFs.
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