Networked Distributed Source Coding

The data sensed by different sensors in a sensor network is typically correlated. A natural question is whether the data correlation can be exploited in innovative ways along with network information transfer techniques to design efficient and distributed schemes for the operation of such networks. This necessarily involves a coupling between the issues of compression and networked data transmission, that have usually been considered separately. In this work we review the basics of classical distributed source coding and discuss some practical code design techniques for it. We argue that the network introduces several new dimensions to the problem of distributed source coding. The compression rates and the network information flow constrain each other in intricate ways. In particular, we show that network coding is often required for optimally combining distributed source coding and network information transfer and discuss the associated issues in detail. We also examine the problem of resource allocation in the context of distributed source coding over networks.