Hardware-limited task-based quantization in systems

In this chapter, we will consider task-oriented representation and acquisition of data in networked and distributed settings: How to acquire, represent, and encode data for the purpose of a specific task. While traditional methods and tools to represent and communicate data are task-agnostic, as they aim to reliably represent the data itself, here we consider task-based representations that directly represent the data for the purpose of a specific task. The philosophy of the approach is to leverage structure in the data itself when it exists, as with task-agnostic representations, but also to take into account the structure induced by the function or task. We will explore adapting representations to the tasks at hand to satisfy the desired constraints imposed by hardware, and by the communication network supporting the applications, considering theory, algorithms, and hardware implementations.