# Progressive Neural Compression for Adaptive Image Offloading under Timing Constraints

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.05306 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.05306/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 25 of its 43 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 8 Oct 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 25 of 25)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [Distilling the Knowledge in a Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.02531/) (2015)
- [EfficientNet: Rethinking Model Scaling for Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.11946/) (2019)
- [You Only Look Once: Unified, Real-Time Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02640/) (2015)
- [MobileNetV2: Inverted Residuals and Linear Bottlenecks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.04381/) (2018)
- [Deep Compression: Compressing Deep Neural Networks with Pruning, Trained Quantization and Huffman Coding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1510.00149/) (2015)
- [Variational image compression with a scale hyperprior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.01436/) (2018)
- [Deep Variational Information Bottleneck](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00410/) (2016)
- [Speech Recognition with Deep Recurrent Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1303.5778/) (2013)
- [Joint Autoregressive and Hierarchical Priors for Learned Image Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.02736/) (2018)
- [Lossy Image Compression with Compressive Autoencoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.00395/) (2017)
- [Model compression via distillation and quantization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.05668/) (2018)
- [Full Resolution Image Compression with Recurrent Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.05148/) (2016)
- [Variable Rate Image Compression with Recurrent Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.06085/) (2015)
- [BottleNet++: An End-to-End Approach for Feature Compression in Device-Edge Co-Inference Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.14315/) (2019)
- [JointDNN: An Efficient Training and Inference Engine for Intelligent Mobile Cloud Computing Services](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.08618/) (2018)
- [BottleNet: A Deep Learning Architecture for Intelligent Mobile Cloud Computing Services](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.01000/) (2019)
- [Adaptive Quantization for Deep Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.01048/) (2017)
- [End-to-end Learning of Compressible Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.11797/) (2020)
- [Supervised Compression for Resource-Constrained Edge Computing Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.11898/) (2021)
- [Progressive Neural Image Compression with Nested Quantization and Latent Ordering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.02913/) (2021)
- [Stochastic Bottleneck: Rateless Auto-Encoder for Flexible Dimensionality Reduction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.02870/) (2020)
- [Real-Time Edge Classification: Optimal Offloading under Token Bucket Constraints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.13737/) (2020)
- [Adaptive Edge Offloading for Image Classification Under Rate Limit](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.00485/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Optimizing Edge Offloading Decisions for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.18919/) (2024)
- [FrameCorr: Adaptive, Autoencoder-based Neural Compression for Video Reconstruction in Resource and Timing Constrained Network Settings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.02453/) (2024)
- [ALADIN: Accuracy-Latency-Aware Design-space Inference Analysis for Embedded AI Accelerators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.08722/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

IoT devices are increasingly the source of data for machine learning (ML) applications running on edge servers. Data transmissions from devices to servers are often over local wireless networks whose bandwidth is not just limited but, more importantly, variable. Furthermore, in cyber-physical systems interacting with the physical environment, image offloading is also commonly subject to timing constraints. It is, therefore, important to develop an adaptive approach that maximizes the inference performance of ML applications under timing constraints and the resource constraints of IoT devices. In this paper, we use image classification as our target application and propose progressive neural compression (PNC) as an efficient solution to this problem. Although neural compression has been used to compress images for different ML applications, existing solutions often produce fixed-size outputs that are unsuitable for timing-constrained offloading over variable bandwidth. To address this limitation, we train a multi-objective rateless autoencoder that optimizes for multiple compression rates via stochastic taildrop to create a compression solution that produces features ordered according to their importance to inference performance. Features are then transmitted in that order based on available bandwidth, with classification ultimately performed using the (sub)set of features received by the deadline. We demonstrate the benefits of PNC over state-of-the-art neural compression approaches and traditional compression methods on a testbed comprising an IoT device and an edge server connected over a wireless network with varying bandwidth.