Successive Wyner-Ziv Coding Scheme and its Application to the Quadratic Gaussian CEO Problem

TL;DR

This paper introduces a successive Wyner-Ziv coding scheme for distributed source coding, demonstrating its ability to achieve any point in the rate region of the quadratic Gaussian CEO problem and establishing conditions for distributed successive refinement.

Contribution

It generalizes the concept of successive refinement to distributed source coding and provides a necessary and sufficient condition for its application in the quadratic Gaussian CEO problem.

Findings

Any rate point in the quadratic Gaussian CEO problem can be achieved with successive Wyner-Ziv coding.

Distributed successive refinement is characterized by a specific necessary and sufficient condition.

The scheme plays a crucial role in achieving optimal rate regions in distributed source coding.

Abstract

We introduce a distributed source coding scheme called successive Wyner-Ziv coding. We show that any point in the rate region of the quadratic Gaussian CEO problem can be achieved via the successive Wyner-Ziv coding. The concept of successive refinement in the single source coding is generalized to the distributed source coding scenario, which we refer to as distributed successive refinement. For the quadratic Gaussian CEO problem, we establish a necessary and sufficient condition for distributed successive refinement, where the successive Wyner-Ziv coding scheme plays an important role.