Sending a Bi-Variate Gaussian Source over a Gaussian MAC

Abstract

We consider a problem where a memoryless bi-variate Gaussian source is to be transmitted over an additive white Gaussian multiple-access channel with two transmitting terminals and one receiving terminal. The first transmitter only sees the first source component and the second transmitter only sees the second source component. We are interested in the pair of mean squared-error distortions at which the receiving terminal can reproduce each of the source components. It is demonstrated that in the symmetric case, below a certain signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) threshold, which is determined by the source correlation, uncoded communication is optimal. For SNRs above this threshold we present outer and inner bounds on the achievable distortions.