11 research outputs found
Improved bounds for the rate loss of multiresolution source codes
We present new bounds for the rate loss of multiresolution source codes (MRSCs). Considering an M-resolution code, the rate loss at the ith resolution with distortion D/sub i/ is defined as L/sub i/=R/sub i/-R(D/sub i/), where R/sub i/ is the rate achievable by the MRSC at stage i. This rate loss describes the performance degradation of the MRSC compared to the best single-resolution code with the same distortion. For two-resolution source codes, there are three scenarios of particular interest: (i) when both resolutions are equally important; (ii) when the rate loss at the first resolution is 0 (L/sub 1/=0); (iii) when the rate loss at the second resolution is 0 (L/sub 2/=0). The work of Lastras and Berger (see ibid., vol.47, p.918-26, Mar. 2001) gives constant upper bounds for the rate loss of an arbitrary memoryless source in scenarios (i) and (ii) and an asymptotic bound for scenario (iii) as D/sub 2/ approaches 0. We focus on the squared error distortion measure and (a) prove that for scenario (iii) L/sub 1/<1.1610 for all D/sub 2/<0.7250; (c) tighten the Lastras-Berger bound for scenario (i) from L/sub i//spl les/1/2 to L/sub i/<0.3802, i/spl isin/{1,2}; and (d) generalize the bounds for scenarios (ii) and (iii) to M-resolution codes with M/spl ges/2. We also present upper bounds for the rate losses of additive MRSCs (AMRSCs). An AMRSC is a special MRSC where each resolution describes an incremental reproduction and the kth-resolution reconstruction equals the sum of the first k incremental reproductions. We obtain two bounds on the rate loss of AMRSCs: one primarily good for low-rate coding and another which depends on the source entropy
Multiuser Successive Refinement and Multiple Description Coding
We consider the multiuser successive refinement (MSR) problem, where the
users are connected to a central server via links with different noiseless
capacities, and each user wishes to reconstruct in a successive-refinement
fashion. An achievable region is given for the two-user two-layer case and it
provides the complete rate-distortion region for the Gaussian source under the
MSE distortion measure. The key observation is that this problem includes the
multiple description (MD) problem (with two descriptions) as a subsystem, and
the techniques useful in the MD problem can be extended to this case. We show
that the coding scheme based on the universality of random binning is
sub-optimal, because multiple Gaussian side informations only at the decoders
do incur performance loss, in contrast to the case of single side information
at the decoder. We further show that unlike the single user case, when there
are multiple users, the loss of performance by a multistage coding approach can
be unbounded for the Gaussian source. The result suggests that in such a
setting, the benefit of using successive refinement is not likely to justify
the accompanying performance loss. The MSR problem is also related to the
source coding problem where each decoder has its individual side information,
while the encoder has the complete set of the side informations. The MSR
problem further includes several variations of the MD problem, for which the
specialization of the general result is investigated and the implication is
discussed.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures. To appear in IEEE Transaction on Information
Theory. References updated and typos correcte
Multiple-Description Coding by Dithered Delta-Sigma Quantization
We address the connection between the multiple-description (MD) problem and
Delta-Sigma quantization. The inherent redundancy due to oversampling in
Delta-Sigma quantization, and the simple linear-additive noise model resulting
from dithered lattice quantization, allow us to construct a symmetric and
time-invariant MD coding scheme. We show that the use of a noise shaping filter
makes it possible to trade off central distortion for side distortion.
Asymptotically as the dimension of the lattice vector quantizer and order of
the noise shaping filter approach infinity, the entropy rate of the dithered
Delta-Sigma quantization scheme approaches the symmetric two-channel MD
rate-distortion function for a memoryless Gaussian source and MSE fidelity
criterion, at any side-to-central distortion ratio and any resolution. In the
optimal scheme, the infinite-order noise shaping filter must be minimum phase
and have a piece-wise flat power spectrum with a single jump discontinuity. An
important advantage of the proposed design is that it is symmetric in rate and
distortion by construction, so the coding rates of the descriptions are
identical and there is therefore no need for source splitting.Comment: Revised, restructured, significantly shortened and minor typos has
been fixed. Accepted for publication in the IEEE Transactions on Information
Theor
Source-Channel Diversity for Parallel Channels
We consider transmitting a source across a pair of independent, non-ergodic
channels with random states (e.g., slow fading channels) so as to minimize the
average distortion. The general problem is unsolved. Hence, we focus on
comparing two commonly used source and channel encoding systems which
correspond to exploiting diversity either at the physical layer through
parallel channel coding or at the application layer through multiple
description source coding.
For on-off channel models, source coding diversity offers better performance.
For channels with a continuous range of reception quality, we show the reverse
is true. Specifically, we introduce a new figure of merit called the distortion
exponent which measures how fast the average distortion decays with SNR. For
continuous-state models such as additive white Gaussian noise channels with
multiplicative Rayleigh fading, optimal channel coding diversity at the
physical layer is more efficient than source coding diversity at the
application layer in that the former achieves a better distortion exponent.
Finally, we consider a third decoding architecture: multiple description
encoding with a joint source-channel decoding. We show that this architecture
achieves the same distortion exponent as systems with optimal channel coding
diversity for continuous-state channels, and maintains the the advantages of
multiple description systems for on-off channels. Thus, the multiple
description system with joint decoding achieves the best performance, from
among the three architectures considered, on both continuous-state and on-off
channels.Comment: 48 pages, 14 figure
Multiple Description Quantization via Gram-Schmidt Orthogonalization
The multiple description (MD) problem has received considerable attention as
a model of information transmission over unreliable channels. A general
framework for designing efficient multiple description quantization schemes is
proposed in this paper. We provide a systematic treatment of the El Gamal-Cover
(EGC) achievable MD rate-distortion region, and show that any point in the EGC
region can be achieved via a successive quantization scheme along with
quantization splitting. For the quadratic Gaussian case, the proposed scheme
has an intrinsic connection with the Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization, which
implies that the whole Gaussian MD rate-distortion region is achievable with a
sequential dithered lattice-based quantization scheme as the dimension of the
(optimal) lattice quantizers becomes large. Moreover, this scheme is shown to
be universal for all i.i.d. smooth sources with performance no worse than that
for an i.i.d. Gaussian source with the same variance and asymptotically optimal
at high resolution. A class of low-complexity MD scalar quantizers in the
proposed general framework also is constructed and is illustrated
geometrically; the performance is analyzed in the high resolution regime, which
exhibits a noticeable improvement over the existing MD scalar quantization
schemes.Comment: 48 pages; submitted to IEEE Transactions on Information Theor
Zero-Delay Multiple Descriptions of Stationary Scalar Gauss-Markov Sources
In this paper, we introduce the zero-delay multiple-description problem, where an encoder constructs two descriptions and the decoders receive a subset of these descriptions. The encoder and decoders are causal and operate under the restriction of zero delay, which implies that at each time instance, the encoder must generate codewords that can be decoded by the decoders using only the current and past codewords. For the case of discrete-time stationary scalar Gauss—Markov sources and quadratic distortion constraints, we present information-theoretic lower bounds on the average sum-rate in terms of the directed and mutual information rate between the source and the decoder reproductions. Furthermore, we show that the optimum test channel is in this case Gaussian, and it can be realized by a feedback coding scheme that utilizes prediction and correlated Gaussian noises. Operational achievable results are considered in the high-rate scenario using a simple differential pulse code modulation scheme with staggered quantizers. Using this scheme, we achieve operational rates within 0.415 bits / sample / description of the theoretical lower bounds for varying description rates
Incremental Refinements and Multiple Descriptions with Feedback
It is well known that independent (separate) encoding of K correlated sources
may incur some rate loss compared to joint encoding, even if the decoding is
done jointly. This loss is particularly evident in the multiple descriptions
problem, where the sources are repetitions of the same source, but each
description must be individually good. We observe that under mild conditions
about the source and distortion measure, the rate ratio Rindependent(K)/Rjoint
goes to one in the limit of small rate/high distortion. Moreover, we consider
the excess rate with respect to the rate-distortion function, Rindependent(K,
M) - R(D), in M rounds of K independent encodings with a final distortion level
D. We provide two examples - a Gaussian source with mean-squared error and an
exponential source with one-sided error - for which the excess rate vanishes in
the limit as the number of rounds M goes to infinity, for any fixed D and K.
This result has an interesting interpretation for a multi-round variant of the
multiple descriptions problem, where after each round the encoder gets a
(block) feedback regarding which of the descriptions arrived: In the limit as
the number of rounds M goes to infinity (i.e., many incremental rounds), the
total rate of received descriptions approaches the rate-distortion function. We
provide theoretical and experimental evidence showing that this phenomenon is
in fact more general than in the two examples above.Comment: 62 pages. Accepted in the IEEE Transactions on Information Theor
Dithered Lattice-Based Quantizers for Multiple Descriptions
Multiple description source coding is aimed at achieving graceful degradation in reconstruction with respect to losing portions of the code, with the cost of some redundancy. We examine multiple description schemes which use entropy coded dithered lattice quantizers (ECDQ). We propose two techniques, one based on successive refinement (SR), and the other a dithered and periodic version of the multiple description scalar quantizer (MDSQ) with distributed cells proposed by Vaishampayan. Similarly to the single description case, both techniques are universal in nature, and are equivalent to additive noise channels. This allows to derive analytical..