We investigate an encoding scheme for lossy compression of a binary symmetric
source based on simple spatially coupled Low-Density Generator-Matrix codes.
The degree of the check nodes is regular and the one of code-bits is Poisson
distributed with an average depending on the compression rate. The performance
of a low complexity Belief Propagation Guided Decimation algorithm is
excellent. The algorithmic rate-distortion curve approaches the optimal curve
of the ensemble as the width of the coupling window grows. Moreover, as the
check degree grows both curves approach the ultimate Shannon rate-distortion
limit. The Belief Propagation Guided Decimation encoder is based on the
posterior measure of a binary symmetric test-channel. This measure can be
interpreted as a random Gibbs measure at a "temperature" directly related to
the "noise level of the test-channel". We investigate the links between the
algorithmic performance of the Belief Propagation Guided Decimation encoder and
the phase diagram of this Gibbs measure. The phase diagram is investigated
thanks to the cavity method of spin glass theory which predicts a number of
phase transition thresholds. In particular the dynamical and condensation
"phase transition temperatures" (equivalently test-channel noise thresholds)
are computed. We observe that: (i) the dynamical temperature of the spatially
coupled construction saturates towards the condensation temperature; (ii) for
large degrees the condensation temperature approaches the temperature (i.e.
noise level) related to the information theoretic Shannon test-channel noise
parameter of rate-distortion theory. This provides heuristic insight into the
excellent performance of the Belief Propagation Guided Decimation algorithm.
The paper contains an introduction to the cavity method