A system and method for realizing a Wyner-Ziv encoder may involve the following steps: (a) applying nested quantization to input data from an information source in order to generate intermediate data; and (b) encoding the intermediate data using an asymmetric Slepian-Wolf encoder in order to generate compressed output data representing the input data. Similarly, a Wyner-Ziv decoder may be realized by applying an asymmetric Slepian-Wolf decoder to compressed input data (representing samples of a first source) to obtain intermediate values, and then, jointly decoding the intermediate values using side information (samples of a second source having known correlation with respect to the first source).