Universal sampling rate distortion

Vinay Praneeth Boda, Prakash Narayan

Abstract: We examine the coordinated and universal rate-efficient sampling of a subset of correlated discrete memoryless sources followed by lossy compression of the sampled sources. The goal is to reconstruct a predesignated subset of sources within a specified level of distortion. The combined sampling mechanism and rate distortion code are universal in that they are devised to perform robustly without exact knowledge of the underlying probability distribution of the sources. Single-letter characterizations are provided for a universal sampling rate distortion function for fixed-set and independent random sampling.