Distributed Source Coding with One Distortion Criterion and Correlated Messages

TL;DR

This paper characterizes the rate-distortion region for distributed source coding with correlated messages and one distortion criterion, providing theoretical proofs and revealing a duality with semi-deterministic broadcast channels.

Contribution

It offers the first information-theoretic characterization of the achievable rate-distortion region for this problem and establishes a duality with semi-deterministic broadcast channels.

Findings

Achievable rate-distortion region is explicitly characterized.

Rigorous proofs for achievability and converse are provided.

Functional duality between source coding and broadcast channels is demonstrated.

Abstract

In this paper, distributed (or multiterminal) source coding with one distortion criterion and correlated messages is considered. This problem can be also called ``Berger-Yeung problem with correlated messages''. It corresponds to the source coding part of the graph-based framework for transmission of a pair of correlated sources over the multiple-access channel (MAC) where one is lossless and the other is lossy. As a result, the achievable rate-distortion region for this problem is provided. It is an information-theoretic characterization of the rate of exponential growth (as a function of the number of source samples) of the size of the bipartite graphs which can represent a pair of correlated sources with satisfying one distortion criterion. A rigorous proof of the achievability and the converse part is given. It is also shown that there exists functional duality between Berger-Yeung problem with correlated messages and semi-deterministic broadcast channel with correlated messages. This means that the optimal encoder-decoder mappings for one problem become the optimal decoder-encoder mappings for the dual problem. In the duality setup, the correlation structure of the messages in the two dual problems, source distortion measure and channel cost measure are also specified.