On Distributed Quantization for Classification
We consider the problem of distributed feature quantization, where the goal is to enable a pretrained classifier at a central node to carry out its classification on features that are gathered from distributed nodes through communication constrained channels. We propose the design of distributed quantization schemes specifically tailored to the classification task: unlike quantization schemes that help the central node reconstruct the original signal as accurately as possible, our focus is not reconstruction accuracy, but instead correct classification.