Exact Asymptotics for the Random Coding Error Probability

Error probabilities of random codes for memoryless channels are considered in this paper. In the area of communication systems, admissible error probability is very small and it is sometimes more important to discuss the relative gap between the achievable error probability and its bound than to discuss the absolute gap. Scarlett et al. derived a good upper bound of a random coding union bound based on the technique of saddlepoint approximation but it is not proved that the relative gap of their bound converges to zero. This paper derives a new bound on the achievable error probability in this viewpoint for a class of memoryless channels. The derived bound is strictly smaller than that by Scarlett et al. and its relative gap with the random coding error probability (not a union bound) vanishes as the block length increases for a fixed coding rate.Comment: Full version of the paper in ISIT2015 with some corrections and refinement

Sphere-packing bound for symmetric classical-quantum channels

© 2017 IEEE. "To be considered for the 2017 IEEE Jack Keil Wolf ISIT Student Paper Award." We provide a sphere-packing lower bound for the optimal error probability in finite blocklengths when coding over a symmetric classical-quantum channel. Our result shows that the pre-factor can be significantly improved from the order of the subexponential to the polynomial, This established pre-factor is arguably optimal because it matches the best known random coding upper bound in the classical case. Our approaches rely on a sharp concentration inequality in strong large deviation theory and crucial properties of the error-exponent function

Importance Sampling for Coded-Modulation Error Probability Estimation

This paper proposes an efficient simulation method based on importance sampling to estimate the random-coding error probability of coded modulation. The technique is valid for complex-valued modulations over Gaussian channels, channels with memory, and naturally extends to fading channels. The simulation method is built on two nested importance samplers to respectively estimate the pairwise error probability and generate the channel input and output. The effect of the respective number of samples on the overall bias and variance of the estimate of the error probability is characterized. For a memoryless channel, the estimator is shown to be consistent and with a small variance, growing with the square root of the code length, rather than the exponential growth of a standard Monte Carlo estimator.This work has been funded in part by the European Research Council under ERC grant agreement 725411, and by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under grant TEC2016-78434-C3-1-R

Properties of Noncommutative Renyi and Augustin Information

The scaled R\'enyi information plays a significant role in evaluating the performance of information processing tasks by virtue of its connection to the error exponent analysis. In quantum information theory, there are three generalizations of the classical R\'enyi divergence---the Petz's, sandwiched, and log-Euclidean versions, that possess meaningful operational interpretation. However, these scaled noncommutative R\'enyi informations are much less explored compared with their classical counterpart, and lacking crucial properties hinders applications of these quantities to refined performance analysis. The goal of this paper is thus to analyze fundamental properties of scaled R\'enyi information from a noncommutative measure-theoretic perspective. Firstly, we prove the uniform equicontinuity for all three quantum versions of R\'enyi information, hence it yields the joint continuity of these quantities in the orders and priors. Secondly, we establish the concavity in the region of $s\in(-1,0)$ for both Petz's and the sandwiched versions. This completes the open questions raised by Holevo [\href{https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/868501/}{\textit{IEEE Trans.~Inf.~Theory}, \textbf{46}(6):2256--2261, 2000}], Mosonyi and Ogawa [\href{https://doi.org/10.1007/s00220-017-2928-4/}{\textit{Commun.~Math.~Phys}, \textbf{355}(1):373--426, 2017}]. For the applications, we show that the strong converse exponent in classical-quantum channel coding satisfies a minimax identity. The established concavity is further employed to prove an entropic duality between classical data compression with quantum side information and classical-quantum channel coding, and a Fenchel duality in joint source-channel coding with quantum side information in the forthcoming papers

The Sphere Packing Bound For Memoryless Channels

Sphere packing bounds (SPBs) ---with prefactors that are polynomial in the block length--- are derived for codes on two families of memoryless channels using Augustin's method: (possibly non-stationary) memoryless channels with (possibly multiple) additive cost constraints and stationary memoryless channels with convex constraints on the composition (i.e. empirical distribution, type) of the input codewords. A variant of Gallager's bound is derived in order to show that these sphere packing bounds are tight in terms of the exponential decay rate of the error probability with the block length under mild hypotheses.Comment: 29 page

Quantum Sphere-Packing Bounds with Polynomial Prefactors

© 1963-2012 IEEE. We study lower bounds on the optimal error probability in classical coding over classical-quantum channels at rates below the capacity, commonly termed quantum sphere-packing bounds. Winter and Dalai have derived such bounds for classical-quantum channels; however, the exponents in their bounds only coincide when the channel is classical. In this paper, we show that these two exponents admit a variational representation and are related by the Golden-Thompson inequality, reaffirming that Dalai's expression is stronger in general classical-quantum channels. Second, we establish a finite blocklength sphere-packing bound for classical-quantum channels, which significantly improves Dalai's prefactor from the order of subexponential to polynomial. Furthermore, the gap between the obtained error exponent for constant composition codes and the best known classical random coding exponent vanishes in the order of $o(\log n / n)$ , indicating our sphere-packing bound is almost exact in the high rate regime. Finally, for a special class of symmetric classical-quantum channels, we can completely characterize its optimal error probability without the constant composition code assumption. The main technical contributions are two converse Hoeffding bounds for quantum hypothesis testing and the saddle-point properties of error exponent functions

The Sphere Packing Bound via Augustin's Method

A sphere packing bound (SPB) with a prefactor that is polynomial in the block length $n$ is established for codes on a length $n$ product channel $W_{[1,n]}$ assuming that the maximum order $1/2$ Renyi capacity among the component channels, i.e. $\max_{t\in[1,n]} C_{1/2,W_{t}}$, is $\mathit{O}(\ln n)$. The reliability function of the discrete stationary product channels with feedback is bounded from above by the sphere packing exponent. Both results are proved by first establishing a non-asymptotic SPB. The latter result continues to hold under a milder stationarity hypothesis.Comment: 30 pages. An error in the statement of Lemma 2 is corrected. The change is inconsequential for the rest of the pape