CIF: Small: Harnessing Network Compression Gains: Fundamental Limits and Practical Implementations

过去，信息消费的增长主要是通过提高电信基础设施的比特承载能力来推动的，包括铺设光纤等资本改进以及使基础设施能够承载更多比特的技术进步。然而，这种简单地移动更多比特的方法现在似乎面临着收益递减。相比之下，很少有人关注数据压缩如何减少必须传输的比特数。因此，未来人均信息消费量的增加可能会受到压缩改进的推动。该项目还将通过为信息理论和数据压缩的专门研究生课程开发可采用的课程材料，为改善STEM教育做出贡献。本研究探讨如何利用压缩的收益，特别是网络收益。这项工作将集中在两个简单网络的有损压缩，这两个网络还没有很好地理解：（1）几个编码器观察单独的源并将压缩版本发送到集中式解码器的问题，解码器试图再现源，以及（2）单个编码器将源的压缩版本广播到多个解码器的问题，解码器利用边信息再现源。对于这两个问题，PI试图确定一类实际重要的实例的信息理论率失真权衡。对于第一个问题，PI还将测量网络增益，该网络增益可以通过构建一个系统来压缩从电网获得的同步相量数据而在实践中获得。

Past increases in information consumption have been fueled mainly by increasing the bit-carrying capacity of our telecommunications infrastructure, including capital improvements such as laying fiber as well as technological advances that enable this infrastructure to carry more bits. This approach of simply moving more bits now appears to be facing diminishing returns, however. In contrast, there has been less attention paid to how data compression can reduce the number of bits that must be communicated. Thus future increases in per-capita information consumption could be driven by improvements in compression. This project will also contribute to improved STEM education through the development of adoptable course materials for a dedicated graduate-level course on information theory and data compression.This research examines how to harness gains in compression, especially network gains. The work will focus on lossy compression for two simple networks that are not well understood: (1) the problem in which several encoders observe separate sources and send compressed versions to a centralized decoder, who seeks to reproduce the sources, and (2) the problem in which a single encoder broadcasts a compressed version of a source to multiple decoders, who reproduce the source with the benefit of side information. For both problems the PIs seek to determine the information-theoretic rate-distortion tradeoffs for a practically-important class of instances. For the first problem, the PIs will also measure the network gains that can be obtained in practice by constructing a system to compress synchrophasor data obtained from the power grid.