Distributed and Cascade Lossy Source Coding With a Side Information “Vending Machine”

Abstract

Source coding with a side information "vending machine" is a recently proposed framework in which the statistical relationship between the side information and the source, instead of being given and fixed as in the classical Wyner-Ziv problem, can be controlled by the decoder. This control action is selected by the decoder based on the message encoded by the source node. Unlike conventional settings, the message can thus carry not only information about the source to be reproduced at the decoder, but also control information aimed at improving the quality of the side information. In this paper, the analysis of the tradeoffs between rate, distortion, and cost associated with the control actions is extended from the previously studied point-to-point setup to two basic multiterminal models. First, a distributed source coding model is studied, in which two encoders communicate over rate-limited links to a decoder, whose side information can be controlled. The control actions are selected by the decoder based on the messages encoded by both source nodes. For this setup, inner bounds are derived on the rate-distortion-cost region for both cases in which the side information is available causally and noncausally at the decoder. These bounds are shown to be tight under specific assumptions, including the scenario in which the sequence observed by one of the nodes is a function of the source observed by the other and the side information is available causally at the decoder. Then, a cascade scenario in which three nodes are connected in a cascade and the last node has controllable side information is also investigated. For this model, the rate-distortion-cost region is derived for general distortion requirements and under the assumption of causal availability of side information at the last node.

On cascade source coding with a side information “vending machine”

“…This model is thus referred to as cascade-broadcast model in the following for short. We also remark that in [7], the characterization of the rate-distortion-cost performance for the model in Fig. 1 was obtained, but under the simplifying assumption that the side information at Node 3 be available in a causal fashion in the sense of [11].…”

“…For side information Z available causally at Node 3, i.e., with decoding function (5) at Node 3 modified so that X i is a function of M 2 and Z i only, the rate-distortion region R(D 1 , D 2 , Γ) has been derived in [7].…”

“…Specifically, [2], [3] considered a set-up analogous to the Heegard-Berger problem [4], in which the side information may or may not be available at the decoder 2 . Instead, in [7], a specific distributed source coding setting, with two encoders and a single decoder, and a cascade source coding model, to be discussed below, were studied in the presence of a side information vending machine.…”

Design of a Simple Vending Machine Using Radio Frequency Identification (Rf-Id)

“…An automatic beverages vending machine using Finite State Machine is proposed [1]. A distributed and cascade lossy source coding with a side information vending machine using control decoder technique is used [2]. In China vending machine operated by GPRS were also developed.…”

Two‐way communication with adaptive data acquisition

“…In , a distributed source coding setting that generalises to the case of a decoder with a side information ‘vending machine’ is investigated. Multi‐hop models were studied in . In , a related problem is considered in which the sequence to be compressed is dependent on the actions taken by a separate encoder.…”