Blahut-Arimoto algorithm and code design for action-dependent source coding problems

The source coding problem with action-dependent side information at the decoder has recently been introduced to model data acquisition in resource-constrained systems. In this paper, an efficient Blahut-Arimoto-type algorithm for the numerical computation of the rate-distortion-cost function for this problem is proposed. Moreover, a simplified two-stage code structure based on multiplexing is put forth, whereby the first stage encodes the actions and the second stage is composed of an array of classical Wyner-Ziv codes, one for each action. Leveraging this structure, specific coding/decoding strategies are designed based on LDGM codes and message passing. Through numerical examples, the proposed code design is shown to achieve performance close to the rate-distortion-cost function.