Scaling laws for correlated data gathering

Consider a set of correlated sources located at the nodes of a network, and a sink to which the data from all the sources have to arrive. We address the minimization of a separable joint communication cost function given by the product [rate] o [edge weight]. We present two possible approaches for rate allocation, namely Slepian-Wolf coding, and coding by explicit communication, and compare asymptotically (large networks) the associated total costs by finding their corresponding scaling laws and analyzing the ratio between them. We also provide the specific conditions on the correlation structure which determine the different cases of asymptotic behaviors