Noise-Resilient Group Testing: Limitations and Constructions

We study combinatorial group testing schemes for learning $d$-sparse Boolean vectors using highly unreliable disjunctive measurements. We consider an adversarial noise model that only limits the number of false observations, and show that any noise-resilient scheme in this model can only approximately reconstruct the sparse vector. On the positive side, we take this barrier to our advantage and show that approximate reconstruction (within a satisfactory degree of approximation) allows us to break the information theoretic lower bound of $\tilde{\Omega}(d^2 \log n)$ that is known for exact reconstruction of $d$-sparse vectors of length $n$ via non-adaptive measurements, by a multiplicative factor $\tilde{\Omega}(d)$. Specifically, we give simple randomized constructions of non-adaptive measurement schemes, with $m=O(d \log n)$ measurements, that allow efficient reconstruction of $d$-sparse vectors up to $O(d)$ false positives even in the presence of $\delta m$ false positives and $O(m/d)$ false negatives within the measurement outcomes, for any constant $\delta < 1$. We show that, information theoretically, none of these parameters can be substantially improved without dramatically affecting the others. Furthermore, we obtain several explicit constructions, in particular one matching the randomized trade-off but using $m = O(d^{1+o(1)} \log n)$ measurements. We also obtain explicit constructions that allow fast reconstruction in time \poly(m), which would be sublinear in $n$ for sufficiently sparse vectors. The main tool used in our construction is the list-decoding view of randomness condensers and extractors.Comment: Full version. A preliminary summary of this work appears (under the same title) in proceedings of the 17th International Symposium on Fundamentals of Computation Theory (FCT 2009

Pooling designs with surprisingly high degree of error correction in a finite vector space

Pooling designs are standard experimental tools in many biotechnical applications. It is well-known that all famous pooling designs are constructed from mathematical structures by the "containment matrix" method. In particular, Macula's designs (resp. Ngo and Du's designs) are constructed by the containment relation of subsets (resp. subspaces) in a finite set (resp. vector space). Recently, we generalized Macula's designs and obtained a family of pooling designs with more high degree of error correction by subsets in a finite set. In this paper, as a generalization of Ngo and Du's designs, we study the corresponding problems in a finite vector space and obtain a family of pooling designs with surprisingly high degree of error correction. Our designs and Ngo and Du's designs have the same number of items and pools, respectively, but the error-tolerant property is much better than that of Ngo and Du's designs, which was given by D'yachkov et al. \cite{DF}, when the dimension of the space is large enough

Lectures on Designing Screening Experiments

Designing Screening Experiments (DSE) is a class of information - theoretical models for multiple - access channels (MAC). We discuss the combinatorial model of DSE called a disjunct channel model. This model is the most important for applications and closely connected with the superimposed code concept. We give a detailed survey of lower and upper bounds on the rate of superimposed codes. The best known constructions of superimposed codes are considered in paper. We also discuss the development of these codes (non-adaptive pooling designs) intended for the clone - library screening problem. We obtain lower and upper bounds on the rate of binary codes for the combinatorial model of DSE called an adder channel model. We also consider the concept of universal decoding for the probabilistic DSE model called a symmetric model of DSE.Comment: 66 page

Applications of Derandomization Theory in Coding

Randomized techniques play a fundamental role in theoretical computer science and discrete mathematics, in particular for the design of efficient algorithms and construction of combinatorial objects. The basic goal in derandomization theory is to eliminate or reduce the need for randomness in such randomized constructions. In this thesis, we explore some applications of the fundamental notions in derandomization theory to problems outside the core of theoretical computer science, and in particular, certain problems related to coding theory. First, we consider the wiretap channel problem which involves a communication system in which an intruder can eavesdrop a limited portion of the transmissions, and construct efficient and information-theoretically optimal communication protocols for this model. Then we consider the combinatorial group testing problem. In this classical problem, one aims to determine a set of defective items within a large population by asking a number of queries, where each query reveals whether a defective item is present within a specified group of items. We use randomness condensers to explicitly construct optimal, or nearly optimal, group testing schemes for a setting where the query outcomes can be highly unreliable, as well as the threshold model where a query returns positive if the number of defectives pass a certain threshold. Finally, we design ensembles of error-correcting codes that achieve the information-theoretic capacity of a large class of communication channels, and then use the obtained ensembles for construction of explicit capacity achieving codes. [This is a shortened version of the actual abstract in the thesis.]Comment: EPFL Phd Thesi

Poisson Group Testing: A Probabilistic Model for Boolean Compressed Sensing

We introduce a novel probabilistic group testing framework, termed Poisson group testing, in which the number of defectives follows a right-truncated Poisson distribution. The Poisson model has a number of new applications, including dynamic testing with diminishing relative rates of defectives. We consider both nonadaptive and semi-adaptive identification methods. For nonadaptive methods, we derive a lower bound on the number of tests required to identify the defectives with a probability of error that asymptotically converges to zero; in addition, we propose test matrix constructions for which the number of tests closely matches the lower bound. For semi-adaptive methods, we describe a lower bound on the expected number of tests required to identify the defectives with zero error probability. In addition, we propose a stage-wise reconstruction algorithm for which the expected number of tests is only a constant factor away from the lower bound. The methods rely only on an estimate of the average number of defectives, rather than on the individual probabilities of subjects being defective