{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,23]],"date-time":"2025-10-23T11:25:38Z","timestamp":1761218738231,"version":"build-2065373602"},"reference-count":20,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"8","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2025,8,8]],"date-time":"2025-08-08T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1754611200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"NSFC","award":["62293481","62201505","SUTD-ZJU (VP) 202102"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["62293481","62201505","SUTD-ZJU (VP) 202102"]}]},{"name":"SUTD-ZJU IDEA","award":["62293481","62201505","SUTD-ZJU (VP) 202102"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["62293481","62201505","SUTD-ZJU (VP) 202102"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Entropy"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Motivated by task-oriented semantic communication and distributed learning systems, this paper studies a distributed indirect source coding problem where M correlated sources are independently encoded for a central decoder. The decoder has access to correlated side information in addition to the messages received from the encoders and aims to recover a latent random variable under a given distortion constraint rather than recovering the sources themselves. We characterize the exact rate-distortion function for the case where the sources are conditionally independent given the side information. Furthermore, we develop a distributed Blahut\u2013Arimoto (BA) algorithm to numerically compute the rate-distortion function. Numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in calculating the rate-distortion region.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/e27080844","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,8,8]],"date-time":"2025-08-08T13:20:09Z","timestamp":1754659209000},"page":"844","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":1,"title":["Rate-Distortion Analysis of Distributed Indirect Source Coding"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"27","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-6833-7740","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jiancheng","family":"Tang","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"College of information Science and Electronic Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310007, China"}]},{"given":"Qianqian","family":"Yang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"College of information Science and Electronic Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310007, China"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,8,8]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"245","DOI":"10.1109\/JSAC.2022.3221952","article-title":"Semantic-preserved communication system for highly efficient speech transmission","volume":"41","author":"Han","year":"2022","journal-title":"IEEE J. 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