Evaluation of the distance spectrum of variable-length finite-state codes

International audienceThe class of variable-length finite-state joint source-channel codes is defined and a polynomial complexity algorithm for the evaluation of their distance spectrum presented. Issues in truncating the spectrum to a finite number of (possibly approximate) terms are discussed and illustrated by experimental results

Finite-Block-Length Analysis in Classical and Quantum Information Theory

Coding technology is used in several information processing tasks. In particular, when noise during transmission disturbs communications, coding technology is employed to protect the information. However, there are two types of coding technology: coding in classical information theory and coding in quantum information theory. Although the physical media used to transmit information ultimately obey quantum mechanics, we need to choose the type of coding depending on the kind of information device, classical or quantum, that is being used. In both branches of information theory, there are many elegant theoretical results under the ideal assumption that an infinitely large system is available. In a realistic situation, we need to account for finite size effects. The present paper reviews finite size effects in classical and quantum information theory with respect to various topics, including applied aspects

Asymptotic Estimates in Information Theory with Non-Vanishing Error Probabilities

This monograph presents a unified treatment of single- and multi-user problems in Shannon's information theory where we depart from the requirement that the error probability decays asymptotically in the blocklength. Instead, the error probabilities for various problems are bounded above by a non-vanishing constant and the spotlight is shone on achievable coding rates as functions of the growing blocklengths. This represents the study of asymptotic estimates with non-vanishing error probabilities. In Part I, after reviewing the fundamentals of information theory, we discuss Strassen's seminal result for binary hypothesis testing where the type-I error probability is non-vanishing and the rate of decay of the type-II error probability with growing number of independent observations is characterized. In Part II, we use this basic hypothesis testing result to develop second- and sometimes, even third-order asymptotic expansions for point-to-point communication. Finally in Part III, we consider network information theory problems for which the second-order asymptotics are known. These problems include some classes of channels with random state, the multiple-encoder distributed lossless source coding (Slepian-Wolf) problem and special cases of the Gaussian interference and multiple-access channels. Finally, we discuss avenues for further research.Comment: Further comments welcom

Fundamental Finite Key Limits for One-Way Information Reconciliation in Quantum Key Distribution

The security of quantum key distribution protocols is guaranteed by the laws of quantum mechanics. However, a precise analysis of the security properties requires tools from both classical cryptography and information theory. Here, we employ recent results in non-asymptotic classical information theory to show that one-way information reconciliation imposes fundamental limitations on the amount of secret key that can be extracted in the finite key regime. In particular, we find that an often used approximation for the information leakage during information reconciliation is not generally valid. We propose an improved approximation that takes into account finite key effects and numerically test it against codes for two probability distributions, that we call binary-binary and binary-Gaussian, that typically appear in quantum key distribution protocols

New binary and ternary LCD codes

LCD codes are linear codes with important cryptographic applications. Recently, a method has been presented to transform any linear code into an LCD code with the same parameters when it is supported on a finite field with cardinality larger than 3. Hence, the study of LCD codes is mainly open for binary and ternary fields. Subfield-subcodes of $J$-affine variety codes are a generalization of BCH codes which have been successfully used for constructing good quantum codes. We describe binary and ternary LCD codes constructed as subfield-subcodes of $J$-affine variety codes and provide some new and good LCD codes coming from this construction

A Unified Framework for Linear-Programming Based Communication Receivers

It is shown that a large class of communication systems which admit a sum-product algorithm (SPA) based receiver also admit a corresponding linear-programming (LP) based receiver. The two receivers have a relationship defined by the local structure of the underlying graphical model, and are inhibited by the same phenomenon, which we call 'pseudoconfigurations'. This concept is a generalization of the concept of 'pseudocodewords' for linear codes. It is proved that the LP receiver has the 'maximum likelihood certificate' property, and that the receiver output is the lowest cost pseudoconfiguration. Equivalence of graph-cover pseudoconfigurations and linear-programming pseudoconfigurations is also proved. A concept of 'system pseudodistance' is defined which generalizes the existing concept of pseudodistance for binary and nonbinary linear codes. It is demonstrated how the LP design technique may be applied to the problem of joint equalization and decoding of coded transmissions over a frequency selective channel, and a simulation-based analysis of the error events of the resulting LP receiver is also provided. For this particular application, the proposed LP receiver is shown to be competitive with other receivers, and to be capable of outperforming turbo equalization in bit and frame error rate performance.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures. To appear in the IEEE Transactions on Communication

A Tight Upper Bound for the Third-Order Asymptotics for Most Discrete Memoryless Channels

This paper shows that the logarithm of the epsilon-error capacity (average error probability) for n uses of a discrete memoryless channel is upper bounded by the normal approximation plus a third-order term that does not exceed 1/2 log n + O(1) if the epsilon-dispersion of the channel is positive. This matches a lower bound by Y. Polyanskiy (2010) for discrete memoryless channels with positive reverse dispersion. If the epsilon-dispersion vanishes, the logarithm of the epsilon-error capacity is upper bounded by the n times the capacity plus a constant term except for a small class of DMCs and epsilon >= 1/2.Comment: published versio