A method for proving multiterminal source coding theorems

The two-step method used by Wyner and Ziv to prove the Wyner-Ziv theorem is extended to prove sliding-block source coding theorems for coding a general finite-alphabet ergodic multiterminal source with respect to a single-letter fidelity criterion. The first step replaces every stochastic encoding in the network by a deterministic sliding-block encoding. The second step involves using the Slepian-Wolf theorem to adjust the sliding-block encodings so that they will have the desired rate. while introducing little additional distortion. The method is applied to give quick proofs of sliding-block versions of theorems of Berger, Kaspi, and Tung. Since the method obtains sliding-block coders directly without first obtaining block coders, the block coding results can be obtained as an easy corollary. The direct methods for proving results on block coding are more difficult and do not imply the corresponding results on sliding-block coding. Indeed, in the multiterminal case it is, in general, not known how to construct good sliding-block coders from good block coders.