Reliability in Source Coding with Side Information

Abstract

We study error exponents for source coding with side information. Both achievable exponents and converse bounds are obtained for the following two cases: lossless source coding with coded information (SCCSI) and lossy source coding with full side information (Wyner-Ziv). These results recover and extend several existing results on source-coding error exponents and are tight in some circumstances. Our bounds have a natural interpretation as a two-player game between nature and the code designer, with nature seeking to minimize the exponent and the code designer seeking to maximize it. In the Wyner-Ziv problem our analysis exposes a tension in the choice of test channel with the optimal test channel balancing two competing error events. The Gaussian and binary-erasure cases are examined in detail.