Information Masking and Amplification: The Source Coding Setting
arXiv:1204.5710 · doi:10.1109/ISIT.2012.6283628
Abstract
The complementary problems of masking and amplifying channel state information in the Gel'fand-Pinsker channel have recently been solved by Merhav and Shamai, and Kim et al., respectively. In this paper, we study a related source coding problem. Specifically, we consider the two-encoder source coding setting where one source is to be amplified, while the other source is to be masked. In general, there is a tension between these two objectives which is characterized by the amplification-masking tradeoff. In this paper, we give a single-letter description of this tradeoff. We apply this result, together with a recent theorem by Courtade and Weissman on multiterminal source coding, to solve a fundamental entropy characterization problem.
6 pages, 1 figure, to appear at the IEEE 2012 International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT 2012)