Abstract

The problem of fixed-distortion universal source coding (or universal D-semifaithfull source coding) for stationary and memoryless sources on countably infinite alphabets is investigated. The main result of this paper offers sufficient conditions to achieve strong and weak minimax universality for D-semifaithfull source coding of any memoryless source defined by an envelope function on infinite alphabets. It is also shown that universal D-semifaithfull source coding is not feasible for the complete family of memoryless sources. Furthermore, a sufficient condition for impossibility is presented for the family of envelope distributions.