This paper considers the problem of source coding with side information at the decoder, also called Slepian-Wolf source coding scheme. In practical applications of this coding scheme, the statistical relation between the source and the side information can vary from one data transmission to another, and there is a need to adapt the coding rate depending on the current statistical relation. In this paper, we propose a novel rate-adaptive code construction based on LDPC codes for the Slepian-Wolf source coding scheme. The proposed code design method allows to optimize the code degree distributions at all the considered rates, while minimizing the amount of short cycles in the parity check matrices at all rates. Simulation results show that the proposed method greatly reduces the source coding rate compared to the standard LDPCA solution.

25 pages, 7 figures, submitted to IEEE Transactions on Communications