On the rate distortion function of Bernoulli Gaussian sequences

In this paper, we study the rate distortion function of the i.i.d sequence of multiplications of a Bernoulli $p$ random variable and a gaussian random variable $\sim N(0,1)$. We use a new technique in the derivation of the lower bound in which we establish the duality between channel coding and lossy source coding in the strong sense. We improve the lower bound on the rate distortion function over the best known lower bound by $p\log_2\frac{1}{p}$ if distortion $D$ is small. This has some interesting implications on sparse signals where $p$ is small since the known gap between the lower and upper bound is $H(p)$. This improvement in the lower bound shows that the lower and upper bounds are almost identical for sparse signals with small distortion because $\lim\limits_{p\to 0}\frac{p\log_2\frac{1}{p}}{H(p)}=1$.Comment: In preparation for IEEE Transactions on I

On the Information Rates of the Plenoptic Function

The {\it plenoptic function} (Adelson and Bergen, 91) describes the visual information available to an observer at any point in space and time. Samples of the plenoptic function (POF) are seen in video and in general visual content, and represent large amounts of information. In this paper we propose a stochastic model to study the compression limits of the plenoptic function. In the proposed framework, we isolate the two fundamental sources of information in the POF: the one representing the camera motion and the other representing the information complexity of the "reality" being acquired and transmitted. The sources of information are combined, generating a stochastic process that we study in detail. We first propose a model for ensembles of realities that do not change over time. The proposed model is simple in that it enables us to derive precise coding bounds in the information-theoretic sense that are sharp in a number of cases of practical interest. For this simple case of static realities and camera motion, our results indicate that coding practice is in accordance with optimal coding from an information-theoretic standpoint. The model is further extended to account for visual realities that change over time. We derive bounds on the lossless and lossy information rates for this dynamic reality model, stating conditions under which the bounds are tight. Examples with synthetic sources suggest that in the presence of scene dynamics, simple hybrid coding using motion/displacement estimation with DPCM performs considerably suboptimally relative to the true rate-distortion bound.Comment: submitted to IEEE Transactions in Information Theor