Code design for IMTSC/CEO problem using multilevel Slepian-Wolf coded quantization framework

The aim of this paper is introducing coding scheme that can potentially achieve the sum rate-distortion bound of Gaussian IMTSC/CEO problem with arbitrary number of encoders. No previous work has been reported on code design for the IMTSC/CEO problem with the number of encoders greater than two. In this paper the framework of Slepian-Wolf coded quantization is extended to the case with the number of encoders greater than two. On the other hand, we apply the approach to the case of unequal levels of the observation noise at the encoders. Encoding process consists of trellis coded quantization (TCQ) and LDPC codes. The proposed framework can be easily used for any number of active encoders greater than two, which, in this work, we used for three, four and five active encoders. The obtained results are promising and show the capability of the proposed method for achieving the sum-rate bound of IMTSC/CEO problem for Gaussian setup with a gap of at most 0.163, 0.291 and 0.346 bit per symbol for three, four and five active encoders, respectively.