We consider the distributed source coding system of $L$ correlated Gaussian sources $Y_i,i=1,2,...,L$ which are noisy observations of correlated Gaussian remote sources $X_k, k=1,2,...,K$. We assume that $Y^{L}={}^{\rm t}(Y_1,Y_2,$ $..., Y_L)$ is an observation of the source vector $X^K={}^{\rm t}(X_1,X_2,..., X_K)$, having the form $Y^L=AX^K+N^L$, where $A$ is a $L\times K$ matrix and $N^L={}^{\rm t}(N_1,N_2,...,N_L)$ is a vector of $L$ independent Gaussian random variables also independent of $X^K$. In this system $L$ correlated Gaussian observations are separately compressed by $L$ encoders and sent to the information processing center. We study the remote source coding problem where the decoder at the center attempts to reconstruct the remote source $X^K$. We consider three distortion criteria based on the covariance matrix of the estimation error on $X^K$. For each of those three criteria we derive explicit inner and outer bounds of the rate distortion region. Next, in the case of $K=L$ and $A=I_L$, we study the multiterminal source coding problem where the decoder wishes to reconstruct the observation $Y^L=X^L+N^L$. To investigate this problem we shall establish a result which provides a strong connection between the remote source coding problem and the multiterminal source coding problem. Using this result, we drive several new partial solutions to the multiterminal source coding problem.
In this paper, we give a distributed joint source channel coding scheme for arbitrary correlated sources for arbitrary point in the Slepian-Wolf rate region, and arbitrary link capacities using LDPC codes. We consider the Slepian-Wolf setting of two sources and one destination, with one of the sources derived from the other source by some correlation model known at the decoder. Distributed encoding and separate decoding is used for the two sources. We also give a distributed source coding scheme when the source correlation has memory to achieve any point in the Slepian-Wolf rate achievable reg…
The distributed index coding problem is studied, whereby multiple messages are stored at different servers to be broadcast to receivers with side information. First, the existing composite coding scheme is enhanced for the centralized (single-server) index coding problem, which is then merged with fractional partitioning of servers to yield a new coding scheme for distributed index coding. New outer bounds on the capacity region are also established. For 213 out of 218 non-isomorphic distributed index coding problems with four messages the achievable sum-rate of the proposed distributed compos…
A joint source-channel coding (JSCC) scheme based on hybrid digital/analog coding is proposed for the transmission of correlated sources over discrete-memoryless two-way channels (DM-TWCs). The scheme utilizes the correlation between the sources in generating channel inputs, thus enabling the users to coordinate their transmission to combat channel noise. The hybrid scheme also subsumes prior coding methods such as rate-one separate source-channel coding and uncoded schemes for two-way lossy transmission, as well as the correlation-preserving coding scheme for (almost) lossless transmission. M…
We consider a distributed source coding system in which several observations are communicated to the decoder using limited transmission rate. The observations must be separately coded. We introduce a robust distributed coding scheme which flexibly trades off between system robustness and compression efficiency. The optimality of this coding scheme is proved for various special cases.
We give a complete characterization of the correlated random coding secrecy capacity of arbitrarily varying wiretap channels (AVWCs). We apply two alternative strong secrecy criteria, which both lead to the same multi-letter formula. The difference of these criteria lies in the treatment of correlated randomness, they coincide in the case of uncorrelated codes. On the basis of the derived formula, we show that the correlated random coding secrecy capacity is continuous as a function of the AVWC, in contrast to the discontinuous uncorrelated coding secrecy capacity. In the proof of the secrecy …
This paper studies the random-coding exponent of joint source-channel coding for the multiple-access channel with correlated sources. For each user, by defining a threshold, the messages of each source are partitioned into two classes. The achievable exponent for correlated sources with two message-dependent input distributions for each user is determined and shown to be larger than that achieved using only one input distribution for each user. A system of equations is presented to determine the optimal thresholds maximizing the achievable exponent. The obtained exponent is compared with the o…
This paper deals with a universal coding problem for a certain kind of multiterminal source coding system that we call the complementary delivery coding system. In this system, messages from two correlated sources are jointly encoded, and each decoder has access to one of the two messages to enable it to reproduce the other message. Both fixed-to-fixed length and fixed-to-variable length lossless coding schemes are considered. Explicit constructions of universal codes and bounds of the error probabilities are clarified via type-theoretical and graph-theoretical analyses. [[Keywords]] multiterm…
Source and channel coding over multiuser channels in which receivers have access to correlated source side information is considered. For several multiuser channel models necessary and sufficient conditions for optimal separation of the source and channel codes are obtained. In particular, the multiple access channel, the compound multiple access channel, the interference channel and the two-way channel with correlated sources and correlated receiver side information are considered, and the optimality of separation is shown to hold for certain source and side information structures. Interestin…
In this paper, we study the capacity region of the general distributed index coding. In contrast to the traditional centralized index coding where a single server contains all $n$ messages requested by the receivers, in the distributed index coding there are $2^n-1$ servers, each containing a unique non-empty subset $J$ of the messages and each is connected to all receivers via a noiseless independent broadcast link with an arbitrary capacity $C_J \ge 0$. First, we generalize the existing polymatroidal outer bound on the capacity region of the centralized problem to the distributed case. Next,…
Non-adaptive joint source network coding of correlated sources is discussed in this paper. By studying the information flow in the network, we propose quantized network coding as an alternative for packet forwarding. This technique has both network coding and distributed source coding advantages, simultaneously. Quantized network coding is a combination of random linear network coding in the (infinite) field of real numbers and quantization to cope with the limited capacity of links. With the aid of the results in the literature of compressed sensing, we discuss theoretical and practical feasi…
Distributed arithmetic coding (DAC) has been shown to be effective for Slepian-Wolf coding, especially for short data blocks. In this letter, we propose to use the DAC to compress momery-correlated sources. More specifically, the correlation between sources is modeled as a hidden Markov process. Experimental results show that the performance is close to the theoretical Slepian-Wolf limit.
Index coding is often studied with the assumption that a single source has all the messages requested by the receivers. We refer to this as \emph{centralized} index coding. In contrast, this paper focuses on \emph{distributed} index coding and addresses the following question: How does the availability of messages at distributed sources (storage nodes) affect the solutions and achievable rates of index coding? An extension to the work of Arbabjolfaei et al. in ISIT 2013 is presented when distributed sources communicate via a semi-deterministic multiple access channel (MAC) to simultaneous rece…
We show that polar codes can be used to achieve the rate-distortion functions in the problem of hierarchical source coding also known as the successive refinement problem. We also analyze the distributed version of this problem, constructing a polar coding scheme that achieves the rate distortion functions for successive refinement with side information.
A subspace-based approach for rate-adaptive distributed source coding (DSC) based on discrete Fourier transform (DFT) codes is developed. Punctured DFT codes can be used to implement rate-adaptive source coding, however they perform poorly after even moderate puncturing since the performance of the subspace error localization degrades severely. The proposed subspace-based error localization extends and improves the existing one, based on additional syndrome, and is naturally suitable for rate-adaptive distributed source coding architecture.
Noisy network coding, which elegantly combines the conventional compress-and-forward relaying strategy and ideas from network coding, has recently drawn much attention for its simplicity and optimality in achieving to within constant gap of the capacity of the multisource multicast Gaussian network. The constant-gap result, however, applies only to Gaussian relay networks with independent noises. This paper investigates the application of noisy network coding to networks with correlated noises. By focusing on a four-node Gaussian relay chain network with a particular noise correlation structur…
Traditional distributed source coding rarely considers the possible link between separate encoders. However, the broadcast nature of wireless communication in sensor networks provides a free gossip mechanism which can be used to simplify encoding/decoding and reduce transmission power. Using this broadcast advantage, we present a new two-encoder scheme which imitates the ping-pong game and has a successive approximation structure. For the quadratic Gaussian case, we prove that this scheme is successively refinable on the {sum-rate, distortion pair} surface, which is characterized by the rate-d…
The problem of broadcasting a pair of correlated Gaussian sources using optimal separate source and channel codes is studied. Considerable performance gains over previously known separate source-channel schemes are observed. Although source-channel separation yields suboptimal performance in general, it is shown that the proposed scheme is very competitive for any bandwidth compression/expansion scenarios. In particular, for a high channel SNR scenario, it can be shown to achieve optimal power-distortion tradeoff.
In this paper, we study a half-duplex two-way relay channel (TWRC) with correlated sources exchanging bidirectional information. In the case, when both sources have the knowledge of correlation statistics, a source compression with physical-layer network coding (SCPNC) scheme is proposed to perform the distributed compression at each source node. When only the relay has the knowledge of correlation statistics, we propose a relay compression with physical-layer network coding (RCPNC) scheme to compress the bidirectional messages at the relay. The closed-form block error rate (BLER) expressions …
Distributed source coding schemes are typically based on the use of channels codes as source codes. In this paper we propose a new paradigm, termed "distributed arithmetic coding", which exploits the fact that arithmetic codes are good source as well as channel codes. In particular, we propose a distributed binary arithmetic coder for Slepian-Wolf coding with decoder side information, along with a soft joint decoder. The proposed scheme provides several advantages over existing Slepian-Wolf coders, especially its good performance at small block lengths, and the ability to incorporate arbitrary…
In distributed multilevel diversity coding, $K$ correlated sources (each with $K$ components) are encoded in a distributed manner such that, given the outputs from any $α$ encoders, the decoder can reconstruct the first $α$ components of each of the corresponding $α$ sources. For this problem, the optimality of a multilayer Slepian-Wolf coding scheme based on binning and superposition is established when $K\leq 3$. The same conclusion is shown to hold for general $K$ under a certain symmetry condition, which generalizes a celebrated result by Yeung and Zhang.
We study the transmission of correlated sources over discrete memoryless (DM) multiple-access-relay channels (MARCs), in which both the relay and the destination have access to side information arbitrarily correlated with the sources. As the optimal transmission scheme is an open problem, in this work we propose a new joint source-channel coding scheme based on a novel combination of the correlation preserving mapping (CPM) technique with Slepian-Wolf (SW) source coding, and obtain the corresponding sufficient conditions. The proposed coding scheme is based on the decode-and-forward strategy, …
We introduce a distributed source coding scheme called successive Wyner-Ziv coding. We show that any point in the rate region of the quadratic Gaussian CEO problem can be achieved via the successive Wyner-Ziv coding. The concept of successive refinement in the single source coding is generalized to the distributed source coding scenario, which we refer to as distributed successive refinement. For the quadratic Gaussian CEO problem, we establish a necessary and sufficient condition for distributed successive refinement, where the successive Wyner-Ziv coding scheme plays an important role.
In this paper, we introduce a model of a single-failure locally recoverable distributed storage system. This model appears to give rise to a problem seemingly dual of the well-studied index coding problem. The relation between the dimensions of an optimal index code and optimal distributed storage code of our model has been established in this paper. We also show some extensions to vector codes.
We consider the problem of distributed joint source-channel coding of correlated Gaussian sources over a Gaussian Multiple Access Channel (GMAC). There may be side information at the decoder and/or at the encoders. First we specialize a general result (for transmission of correlated sources over a MAC with side information) to obtain sufficient conditions for reliable transmission over a Gaussian MAC. This system does not satisfy the source-channel separation. We study and compare three joint source-channel coding schemes available in literature. We show that each of these schemes is optimal u…
In this paper, distributed (or multiterminal) source coding with one distortion criterion and correlated messages is considered. This problem can be also called ``Berger-Yeung problem with correlated messages''. It corresponds to the source coding part of the graph-based framework for transmission of a pair of correlated sources over the multiple-access channel (MAC) where one is lossless and the other is lossy. As a result, the achievable rate-distortion region for this problem is provided. It is an information-theoretic characterization of the rate of exponential growth (as a function of the…
The problem of reliable transmission of correlated sources over the broadcast channel, originally studied by Han and Costa, is revisited. An alternative characterization of their sufficient condition for reliable transmission is given, which includes results of Marton for channel coding over broadcast channels and of Gray and Wyner for distributed source coding. A ``minimalistic'' coding scheme is presented, which is based on joint typicality encoding and decoding, without requiring the use of Cover's superposition coding, random hashing, and common part between two sources. The analysis of th…
In this paper, we propose a lattice-based robust distributed source coding system for two correlated sources and provide a detailed performance analysis under the high resolution assumption. It is shown, among other things, that, in the asymptotic regime where 1) the side distortion approaches 0 and 2) the ratio between the central and side distortions approaches 0, our scheme is capable of achieving the information-theoretic limit of quadratic multiple description coding when the two sources are identical, whereas a variant of the random coding scheme by Chen and Berger with Gaussian codes ha…
In this paper, we consider general two-way relay networks (TWRNs) with two source and N relay nodes. A distributed differential space time coding with analog network coding (DDSTC-ANC) scheme is proposed. A simple blind estimation and a differential signal detector are developed to recover the desired signal at each source. The pairwise error probability (PEP) and block error rate (BLER) of the DDSTC-ANC scheme are analyzed. Exact and simplified PEP expressions are derived. To improve the system performance, the optimum power allocation (OPA) between the source and relay nodes is determined ba…
Motivated by applications in distributed storage and distributed computation, we introduce embedded index coding (EIC). EIC is a type of distributed index coding in which nodes in a distributed system act as both senders and receivers of information. We show how embedded index coding is related to index coding in general, and give characterizations and bounds on the communication costs of optimal embedded index codes. We also define task-based EIC, in which each sending node encodes and sends data blocks independently of the other nodes. Task-based EIC is more computationally tractable and has…
In this paper we provide sufficient conditions for lossy transmission of functions of correlated data over a multiple access channel (MAC). The conditions obtained can be shown as generalized version of Yamamoto's result. We also obtain efficient joint source-channel coding schemes for transmission of discrete and continuous alphabet sources to recover the function values. Keywords: Joint source-channel coding, Graph coloring, Lipschitz functions, Correlated sources.
This paper studies the optimization of zero-delay analog mappings in a network setting that involves distributed coding. The cost surface is known to be non-convex, and known greedy methods tend to get trapped in poor locally optimal solutions that depend heavily on initialization. We derive an optimization algorithm based on the principles of "deterministic annealing", a powerful global optimization framework that has been successfully employed in several disciplines, including, in our recent work, to a simple zero-delay analog communications problem. We demonstrate strict superiority over th…
Lossy coding of correlated sources over a multiple access channel (MAC) is studied. First, a joint source-channel coding scheme is presented when the decoder has correlated side information. Next, the optimality of separate source and channel coding, that emerges from the availability of a common observation at the encoders, or side information at the encoders and the decoder, is investigated. It is shown that separation is optimal when the encoders have access to a common observation whose lossless recovery is required at the decoder, and the two sources are independent conditioned on this co…
In index coding, a server broadcasts multiple messages to their respective receivers, each with some side information that can be utilized to reduce the amount of communication from the server. Distributed index coding is an extension of index coding in which the messages are broadcast from multiple servers, each storing different subsets of the messages. In this paper, the optimal tradeoff among the message rates and the server broadcast rates, which is defined formally as the capacity region, is studied for a general distributed index coding problem. Inner and outer bounds on the capacity re…
Unitary space-time modulation is known to be an efficient means to communicate over non-coherent Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) channels. In this letter, differential unitary space-time coding and non-coherent space-time coding for the training based approach of Kim and Tarokh are addressed. For this approach, necessary and sufficient conditions for multi-group decodability are derived in a simple way assuming a Generalized Likelihood Ratio Test receiver and a unitary codebook. Extending Kim and Tarokh's approach for colocated MIMO systems, a novel training based approach to distributed…
In this paper, we use linear codes to study zero-error Slepian-Wolf coding of a set of sources with deviation symmetry, where the sources are generalization of the Hamming sources over an arbitrary field. We extend our previous codes, Generalized Hamming Codes for Multiple Sources, to Matrix Partition Codes and use the latter to efficiently compress the target sources. We further show that every perfect or linear-optimal code is a Matrix Partition Code. We also present some conditions when Matrix Partition Codes are perfect and/or linear-optimal. Detail discussions of Matrix Partition Codes on…
We consider the distributed source coding system for $L$ correlated Gaussian observations $Y_i, i=1,2, ..., L$. Let $X_i,i=1,2, ..., L$ be $L$ correlated Gaussian random variables and $N_i,$ $i=1,2,... L$ be independent additive Gaussian noises also independent of $X_i, i=1,2,..., L$. We consider the case where for each $i=1,2,..., L$, $Y_i$ is a noisy observation of $X_i$, that is, $Y_i=X_i+N_i$. On this coding system the determination problem of the rate distortion region remains open. In this paper, we derive explicit outer and inner bounds of the rate distortion region. We further find an …
In this paper we consider the communication problem that involves transmission of correlated sources over broadcast channels. We consider a graph-based framework for this information transmission problem. The system involves a source coding module and a channel coding module. In the source coding module, the sources are efficiently mapped into a nearly semi-regular bipartite graph, and in the channel coding module, the edges of this graph are reliably transmitted over a broadcast channel. We consider nearly semi-regular bipartite graphs as discrete interface between source coding and channel c…
The distributed source coding problem is considered when the sensors, or encoders, are under Byzantine attack; that is, an unknown number of sensors have been reprogrammed by a malicious intruder to undermine the reconstruction at the fusion center. Three different forms of the problem are considered. The first is a variable-rate setup, in which the decoder adaptively chooses the rates at which the sensors transmit. An explicit characterization of the variable-rate minimum achievable sum rate is stated, given by the maximum entropy over the set of distributions indistinguishable from the true …
Achievability and converse results for the lossy transmission of correlated sources over Shannon's two-way channels (TWCs) are presented. A joint source-channel coding theorem for independent sources and TWCs for which adaptation cannot enlarge the capacity region is also established. We further investigate the optimality of scalar coding for TWCs with discrete modulo additive noise as well as additive white Gaussian noise. Comparing the distortion of scalar coding with the derived bounds, we observe that scalar coding achieves the minimum distortion over both families of TWCs for independent …
We consider a distributed source coding problem of $L$ correlated Gaussian observations $Y_i, i=1,2,...,L$. We assume that the random vector $Y^{L}={}^{\rm t} (Y_1,Y_2,$ $...,Y_L)$ is an observation of the Gaussian random vector $X^K={}^{\rm t}(X_1,X_2,...,X_K)$, having the form $Y^L=AX^K+N^L ,$ where $A$ is a $L\times K$ matrix and $N^L={}^{\rm t}(N_1,N_2,...,N_L)$ is a vector of $L$ independent Gaussian random variables also independent of $X^K$. The estimation error on $X^K$ is measured by the distortion covariance matrix. The rate distortion region is defined by a set of all rate vectors f…
Low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes with the parity-based approach for distributed joint source channel coding (DJSCC) with decoder side information is described in this paper. The parity-based approach is theoretical limit achievable. Different edge degree distributions are used for source variable nodes and parity variable nodes. Particularly, the codeword-averaged density evolution (CADE) is presented for asymmetrically correlated nonuniform sources over the asymmetric memoryless transmission channel. Extensive simulations show that the splitting of variable nodes can improve the coding e…
A coding problem for correlated information sources is investigated. Messages emitted from two correlated sources are jointly encoded, and delivered to two decoders. Each decoder has access to one of the two messages to enable it to reproduce the other message. The rate-distortion function for the coding problem and its interesting properties are clarified.
In this paper, we propose {\em distributed network compression via memory}. We consider two spatially separated sources with correlated unknown source parameters. We wish to study the universal compression of a sequence of length $n$ from one of the sources provided that the decoder has access to (i.e., memorized) a sequence of length $m$ from the other source. In this setup, the correlation does not arise from symbol-by-symbol dependency of two outputs from the two sources (as in Slepian-Wolf setup). Instead, the two sequences are correlated because they are originated from the two sources wi…
In the distributed coding of correlated sources, the problem of characterizing the joint probability distribution of a pair of random variables satisfying an n-letter Markov chain arises. The exact solution of this problem is intractable. In this paper, we seek a single-letter necessary condition for this n-letter Markov chain. To this end, we propose a new data processing inequality on a new measure of correlation by means of spectrum analysis. Based on this new data processing inequality, we provide a single-letter necessary condition for the required joint probability distribution. We apply…
The second-order achievable rate region in Slepian-Wolf source coding systems is investigated. The concept of second-order achievable rates, which enables us to make a finer evaluation of achievable rates, has already been introduced and analyzed for general sources in the single-user source coding problem. Analogously, in this paper, we first define the second-order achievable rate region for the Slepian-Wolf coding system to establish the source coding theorem in the second- order sense. The Slepian-Wolf coding problem for correlated sources is one of typical problems in the multi-terminal i…
Multiple input multiple output (MIMO) precoding is an efficient scheme that may significantly enhance the communication link. However, this enhancement comes with a cost. Many precoding schemes require channel knowledge at the transmitter that is obtained through feedback from the receiver. Focusing on the natural common fusion of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and MIMO, we exploit the channel correlation in the frequency and spatial domain to reduce the required feedback rate in a frequency division duplex (FDD) system. The proposed feedback method is based on Huffman codin…
We consider distributed gradient descent in the presence of stragglers. Recent work on \em gradient coding \em and \em approximate gradient coding \em have shown how to add redundancy in distributed gradient descent to guarantee convergence even if some workers are \em stragglers\em---that is, slow or non-responsive. In this work we propose an approximate gradient coding scheme called \em Stochastic Gradient Coding \em (SGC), which works when the stragglers are random. SGC distributes data points redundantly to workers according to a pair-wise balanced design, and then simply ignores the strag…
Distributed source coding is traditionally viewed in the block coding context -- all the source symbols are known in advance at the encoders. This paper instead considers a streaming setting in which iid source symbol pairs are revealed to the separate encoders in real time and need to be reconstructed at the decoder with some tolerable end-to-end delay using finite rate noiseless channels. A sequential random binning argument is used to derive a lower bound on the error exponent with delay and show that both ML decoding and universal decoding achieve the same positive error exponents inside t…
This paper investigates the distributed space-time (ST) coding proposals for the future Digital Video Broadcasting--Next Generation Handheld (DVB-NGH) standard. We first theoretically show that the distributed MIMO scheme is the best broadcasting scenario in terms of channel capacity. Consequently we evaluate the performance of several ST coding proposals for DVB-NGH with practical system specifications and channel conditions. Simulation results demonstrate that the 3D code is the best ST coding solution for broadcasting in the distributed MIMO scenario.
Three science and engineering problems of recent interests -index coding, locally recoverable distributed storage, and guessing games on graphs- are discussed and the connection between their optimal solutions is elucidated. By generalizing recent results by Shanmugam and Dimakis and by Mazumdar on the complementarity between the optimal broadcast rate of an index coding problem on a directed graph and the normalized rate of a locally recoverable distributed storage problem on the same graph, it is shown that the capacity region and the optimal rate region of these two problems are complementa…
In this paper, we propose a new distributed coding structure with a soft input soft output (SISO) relay encoder for error-prone parallel relay channels. We refer to it as the distributed soft coding (DISC). In the proposed scheme, each relay first uses the received noisy signals to calculate the soft bit estimate (SBE) of the source symbols. A simple SISO encoder is developed to encode the SBEs of source symbols based on a constituent code generator matrix. The SISO encoder outputs at different relays are then forwarded to the destination and form a distributed codeword. The performance of the…
This paper considers a degraded Gaussian broadcast channel over which Gaussian sources are to be communicated. When the sources are independent, this paper shows that hybrid coding achieves the optimal distortion region, the same as that of separate source and channel coding. It also shows that uncoded transmission is not optimal for this setting. For correlated sources, the paper shows that a hybrid coding strategy has a better distortion region than separate source-channel coding below a certain signal to noise ratio threshold. Thus, hybrid coding is a good choice for Gaussian broadcast chan…
We consider the problem of transmission of several distributed sources over a multiple access channel (MAC) with side information at the sources and the decoder. Source-channel separation does not hold for this channel. Sufficient conditions are provided for transmission of sources with a given distortion. The source and/or the channel could have continuous alphabets (thus Gaussian sources and Gaussian MACs are special cases). Various previous results are obtained as special cases. We also provide several good joint source-channel coding schemes for a discrete/continuous source and discrete/co…
The current BigData era routinely requires the processing of large scale data on massive distributed computing clusters. Such large scale clusters often suffer from the problem of "stragglers", which are defined as slow or failed nodes. The overall speed of a computational job on these clusters is typically dominated by stragglers in the absence of a sophisticated assignment of tasks to the worker nodes. In recent years, approaches based on coding theory (referred to as "coded computation") have been effectively used for straggler mitigation. Coded computation offers significant benefits for s…
We consider the problem of data collection in a two-layer network consisting of (1) links between $N$ distributed agents and a remote sink node; (2) a sparse network formed by these distributed agents. We study the effect of inter-agent communications on the overall energy consumption. Despite the sparse connections between agents, we provide an in-network coding scheme that reduces the overall energy consumption by a factor of $Θ(\log N)$ compared to a naive scheme which neglects inter-agent communications. By providing lower bounds on both the energy consumption and the sparseness (number of…