533,319 research outputs found
High-rate self-synchronizing codes
Self-synchronization under the presence of additive noise can be achieved by
allocating a certain number of bits of each codeword as markers for
synchronization. Difference systems of sets are combinatorial designs which
specify the positions of synchronization markers in codewords in such a way
that the resulting error-tolerant self-synchronizing codes may be realized as
cosets of linear codes. Ideally, difference systems of sets should sacrifice as
few bits as possible for a given code length, alphabet size, and
error-tolerance capability. However, it seems difficult to attain optimality
with respect to known bounds when the noise level is relatively low. In fact,
the majority of known optimal difference systems of sets are for exceptionally
noisy channels, requiring a substantial amount of bits for synchronization. To
address this problem, we present constructions for difference systems of sets
that allow for higher information rates while sacrificing optimality to only a
small extent. Our constructions utilize optimal difference systems of sets as
ingredients and, when applied carefully, generate asymptotically optimal ones
with higher information rates. We also give direct constructions for optimal
difference systems of sets with high information rates and error-tolerance that
generate binary and ternary self-synchronizing codes.Comment: 9 pages, no figure, 2 tables. Final accepted version for publication
in the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. Material presented in part at
the International Symposium on Information Theory and its Applications,
Honolulu, HI USA, October 201
Topology Inspired Problems for Cellular Automata, and a Counterexample in Topology
We consider two relatively natural topologizations of the set of all cellular
automata on a fixed alphabet. The first turns out to be rather pathological, in
that the countable space becomes neither first-countable nor sequential. Also,
reversible automata form a closed set, while surjective ones are dense. The
second topology, which is induced by a metric, is studied in more detail.
Continuity of composition (under certain restrictions) and inversion, as well
as closedness of the set of surjective automata, are proved, and some
counterexamples are given. We then generalize this space, in the sense that
every shift-invariant measure on the configuration space induces a pseudometric
on cellular automata, and study the properties of these spaces. We also
characterize the pseudometric spaces using the Besicovitch distance, and show a
connection to the first (pathological) space.Comment: In Proceedings AUTOMATA&JAC 2012, arXiv:1208.249
Sleeping Beauty Reconsidered: Conditioning and Reflection in Asynchronous Systems
A careful analysis of conditioning in the Sleeping Beauty problem is done,
using the formal model for reasoning about knowledge and probability developed
by Halpern and Tuttle. While the Sleeping Beauty problem has been viewed as
revealing problems with conditioning in the presence of imperfect recall, the
analysis done here reveals that the problems are not so much due to imperfect
recall as to asynchrony. The implications of this analysis for van Fraassen's
Reflection Principle and Savage's Sure-Thing Principle are considered.Comment: A preliminary version of this paper appears in Principles of
Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Proceedings of the Ninth
International Conference (KR 2004). This version will appear in Oxford
Studies in Epistemolog
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