397 research outputs found
Some Applications of Coding Theory in Computational Complexity
Error-correcting codes and related combinatorial constructs play an important
role in several recent (and old) results in computational complexity theory. In
this paper we survey results on locally-testable and locally-decodable
error-correcting codes, and their applications to complexity theory and to
cryptography.
Locally decodable codes are error-correcting codes with sub-linear time
error-correcting algorithms. They are related to private information retrieval
(a type of cryptographic protocol), and they are used in average-case
complexity and to construct ``hard-core predicates'' for one-way permutations.
Locally testable codes are error-correcting codes with sub-linear time
error-detection algorithms, and they are the combinatorial core of
probabilistically checkable proofs
Codes, Cryptography, and the McEliece Cryptosystem
Over the past several decades, technology has continued to develop at an incredible rate, and the importance of properly securing information has increased significantly. While a variety of encryption schemes currently exist for this purpose, a number of them rely on problems, such as integer factorization, that are not resistant to quantum algorithms. With the reality of quantum computers approaching, it is critical that a quantum-resistant method of protecting information is found. After developing the proper background, we evaluate the potential of the McEliece cryptosystem for use in the post-quantum era by examining families of algebraic geometry codes that allow for increased security. Finally, we develop a family of twisted Hermitian codes that meets the criteria set forth for security
Two Theorems in List Decoding
We prove the following results concerning the list decoding of
error-correcting codes:
(i) We show that for \textit{any} code with a relative distance of
(over a large enough alphabet), the following result holds for \textit{random
errors}: With high probability, for a \rho\le \delta -\eps fraction of random
errors (for any \eps>0), the received word will have only the transmitted
codeword in a Hamming ball of radius around it. Thus, for random errors,
one can correct twice the number of errors uniquely correctable from worst-case
errors for any code. A variant of our result also gives a simple algorithm to
decode Reed-Solomon codes from random errors that, to the best of our
knowledge, runs faster than known algorithms for certain ranges of parameters.
(ii) We show that concatenated codes can achieve the list decoding capacity
for erasures. A similar result for worst-case errors was proven by Guruswami
and Rudra (SODA 08), although their result does not directly imply our result.
Our results show that a subset of the random ensemble of codes considered by
Guruswami and Rudra also achieve the list decoding capacity for erasures.
Our proofs employ simple counting and probabilistic arguments.Comment: 19 pages, 0 figure
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