In telecommunications, dirty paper coding (DPC) or Costa precoding is a technique for efficient transmission of digital data through a channel subjected to some interference known to the transmitter. The technique consists of precoding the data in order to cancel the interference. Dirty-paper coding achieves the channel capacity without a power penalty and without requiring the receiver to know the interfering signal.
The term dirty paper coding was coined by Max Costa[1] who compared the technique to writing a message on a piece of paper which is partially soiled with random ink strokes or spots. By erasing and adding ink in the proper places, the writer can convey just as much information as if the paper were clean, even though the reader does not know where the dirt was. In this analogy, the paper is the channel, the dirt is interference, the writer is the transmitter, and the reader is the receiver.
Note that DPC at the encoder is an information-theoretic dual of Wyner–Ziv coding at the decoder.[citation needed]