Interactive Function Computation with Reconstruction Constraints

Abstract: This paper investigates two-terminal interactive function computation with reconstruction constraints. Each terminal wants to compute a (possibly different) function of two correlated sources, but can only access one of the sources directly. In addition to distortion constraints at the terminals, each terminal is required to estimate the computed function value at the other terminal in a lossy fashion, leading to the constrained reconstruction constraint. A special case of constrained reconstruction is the common reconstruction constraint, in which both terminals agree on the functions computed with probability one. The terminals exchange information in multiple rate constrained communication rounds. A characterization of the multi-round rate-distortion region for the above problem with constrained reconstruction constraints is provided. To gain more insights and to highlight the value of interaction and order of communication, the rate-distortion region for computing various functions of jointly Gaussian sources according to common reconstruction constraints is studied.