Reliable source transmission over relay networks with Side Information

In this paper, we consider reliable transmission of a discrete memoryless source over multi-relay networks with correlated Side Information (SI) available at the relay nodes and the final receiver. We obtain a necessary condition for reliable source transmission over a multi-terminal network with SI, which results in a necessary condition for a multi-relay network with SI, as a special case. We also propose a separate source-channel coding scheme, and based on it, a sufficient condition for a multi-relay network with SI is derived. Based on a partitioning method and the nature of a degraded relay network, we propose another coding scheme which results in a sufficient condition for a degraded relay network with SI. We show that these proposed schemes which are based on operational separation, achieve the same rates as the joint source-channel codes and these sufficient conditions are indeed necessary conditions for the degraded relay networks with degraded SI.