Universal lossless source coding with the Burrows Wheeler transform

The Burrows Wheeler transform (1994) is a reversible sequence transformation used in a variety of practical lossless source-coding algorithms. In each, the BWT is followed by a lossless source code that attempts to exploit the natural ordering of the BWT coefficients. BWT-based compression schemes are widely touted as low-complexity algorithms giving lossless coding rates better than those of the Ziv-Lempel codes (commonly known as LZ'77 and LZ'78) and almost as good as those achieved by prediction by partial matching (PPM) algorithms. To date, the coding performance claims have been made primarily on the basis of experimental results. This work gives a theoretical evaluation of BWT-based coding. The main results of this theoretical evaluation include: (1) statistical characterizations of the BWT output on both finite strings and sequences of length n → ∞, (2) a variety of very simple new techniques for BWT-based lossless source coding, and (3) proofs of the universality and bounds on the rates of convergence of both new and existing BWT-based codes for finite-memory and stationary ergodic sources. The end result is a theoretical justification and validation of the experimentally derived conclusions: BWT-based lossless source codes achieve universal lossless coding performance that converges to the optimal coding performance more quickly than the rate of convergence observed in Ziv-Lempel style codes and, for some BWT-based codes, within a constant factor of the optimal rate of convergence for finite-memory source

Feedback Communication Systems with Limitations on Incremental Redundancy

This paper explores feedback systems using incremental redundancy (IR) with noiseless transmitter confirmation (NTC). For IR-NTC systems based on {\em finite-length} codes (with blocklength $N$) and decoding attempts only at {\em certain specified decoding times}, this paper presents the asymptotic expansion achieved by random coding, provides rate-compatible sphere-packing (RCSP) performance approximations, and presents simulation results of tail-biting convolutional codes. The information-theoretic analysis shows that values of $N$ relatively close to the expected latency yield the same random-coding achievability expansion as with $N = \infty$. However, the penalty introduced in the expansion by limiting decoding times is linear in the interval between decoding times. For binary symmetric channels, the RCSP approximation provides an efficiently-computed approximation of performance that shows excellent agreement with a family of rate-compatible, tail-biting convolutional codes in the short-latency regime. For the additive white Gaussian noise channel, bounded-distance decoding simplifies the computation of the marginal RCSP approximation and produces similar results as analysis based on maximum-likelihood decoding for latencies greater than 200. The efficiency of the marginal RCSP approximation facilitates optimization of the lengths of incremental transmissions when the number of incremental transmissions is constrained to be small or the length of the incremental transmissions is constrained to be uniform after the first transmission. Finally, an RCSP-based decoding error trajectory is introduced that provides target error rates for the design of rate-compatible code families for use in feedback communication systems.Comment: 23 pages, 15 figure

Low-complexity quantum codes designed via codeword-stabilized framework

We consider design of the quantum stabilizer codes via a two-step, low-complexity approach based on the framework of codeword-stabilized (CWS) codes. In this framework, each quantum CWS code can be specified by a graph and a binary code. For codes that can be obtained from a given graph, we give several upper bounds on the distance of a generic (additive or non-additive) CWS code, and the lower Gilbert-Varshamov bound for the existence of additive CWS codes. We also consider additive cyclic CWS codes and show that these codes correspond to a previously unexplored class of single-generator cyclic stabilizer codes. We present several families of simple stabilizer codes with relatively good parameters.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl

Explicit and Efficient Construction of (nearly) Optimal Rate Codes for Binary Deletion Channel and the Poisson Repeat Channel

Two of the most common models for channels with synchronisation errors are the Binary Deletion Channel with parameter $p$ ($\text{BDC}_p$) -- a channel where every bit of the codeword is deleted i.i.d with probability $p$, and the Poisson Repeat Channel with parameter $\lambda$ ($\text{PRC}_\lambda$) -- a channel where every bit of the codeword is repeated $\text{Poisson}(\lambda)$ times. Previous constructions based on synchronisation strings yielded codes with rates far lower than the capacities of these channels [CS19, GL18], and the only efficient construction to achieve capacity on the BDC at the time of writing this paper is based on the far more advanced methods of polar codes [TPFV21]. In this work, we present a new method for concatenating synchronisation codes and use it to construct simple and efficient encoding and decoding algorithms for both channels with nearly optimal rates