Comparison Between the Joint and Successive Decoding Schemes for the Binary CEO Problem

Abstract: A comparison between the joint and the successive decoding schemes for a two-link case binary Chief Executive Officer (CEO) problem is presented. We utilize the logarithmic loss as the criterion for measuring and comparing the total distortion of the decoding techniques. The binary symmetric channel (BSC) is considered as the test-channel model, which provides a theoretical rate-distortion bound. Simulation results show that the joint decoding scheme provides smaller compression rate and distortion values compared to the successive decoding scheme. On the other hand the successive decoding method has lower complexity; therefore, it is efficient for the cases with higher number of links.