Source Coding and Parallel Routing

We consider a simple communication network model and focus on a single source-destination pair to exploit the interconnection between Source Coding and Parallel Routing. We consider a Distortion Measure that combines signal reconstruction fldelity with network delay and we pose the problem of minimizing this Measure by jointly choosing the Encoder Parameters and the Routing Parameters. We look at single-description coding as well as multiple-description coding and we perform numerical optimization that yields interesting design trade-ofis that are insightful and can be exploited in more realistic environments.