32 research outputs found

    Lower Bounds for 2-Query LCCs over Large Alphabet

    Get PDF
    A locally correctable code (LCC) is an error correcting code that allows correction of any arbitrary coordinate of a corrupted codeword by querying only a few coordinates. We show that any 2-query locally correctable code C:{0,1}^k -> Sigma^n that can correct a constant fraction of corrupted symbols must have n >= exp(k/log|Sigma|) under the assumption that the LCC is zero-error. We say that an LCC is zero-error if there exists a non-adaptive corrector algorithm that succeeds with probability 1 when the input is an uncorrupted codeword. All known constructions of LCCs are zero-error. Our result is tight upto constant factors in the exponent. The only previous lower bound on the length of 2-query LCCs over large alphabet was Omega((k/log|Sigma|)^2) due to Katz and Trevisan (STOC 2000). Our bound implies that zero-error LCCs cannot yield 2-server private information retrieval (PIR) schemes with sub-polynomial communication. Since there exists a 2-server PIR scheme with sub-polynomial communication (STOC 2015) based on a zero-error 2-query locally decodable code (LDC), we also obtain a separation between LDCs and LCCs over large alphabet

    Lower bounds for constant query affine-invariant LCCs and LTCs

    Get PDF
    Affine-invariant codes are codes whose coordinates form a vector space over a finite field and which are invariant under affine transformations of the coordinate space. They form a natural, well-studied class of codes; they include popular codes such as Reed-Muller and Reed-Solomon. A particularly appealing feature of affine-invariant codes is that they seem well-suited to admit local correctors and testers. In this work, we give lower bounds on the length of locally correctable and locally testable affine-invariant codes with constant query complexity. We show that if a code CΣKn\mathcal{C} \subset \Sigma^{\mathbb{K}^n} is an rr-query locally correctable code (LCC), where K\mathbb{K} is a finite field and Σ\Sigma is a finite alphabet, then the number of codewords in C\mathcal{C} is at most exp(OK,r,Σ(nr1))\exp(O_{\mathbb{K}, r, |\Sigma|}(n^{r-1})). Also, we show that if CΣKn\mathcal{C} \subset \Sigma^{\mathbb{K}^n} is an rr-query locally testable code (LTC), then the number of codewords in C\mathcal{C} is at most exp(OK,r,Σ(nr2))\exp(O_{\mathbb{K}, r, |\Sigma|}(n^{r-2})). The dependence on nn in these bounds is tight for constant-query LCCs/LTCs, since Guo, Kopparty and Sudan (ITCS `13) construct affine-invariant codes via lifting that have the same asymptotic tradeoffs. Note that our result holds for non-linear codes, whereas previously, Ben-Sasson and Sudan (RANDOM `11) assumed linearity to derive similar results. Our analysis uses higher-order Fourier analysis. In particular, we show that the codewords corresponding to an affine-invariant LCC/LTC must be far from each other with respect to Gowers norm of an appropriate order. This then allows us to bound the number of codewords, using known decomposition theorems which approximate any bounded function in terms of a finite number of low-degree non-classical polynomials, upto a small error in the Gowers norm

    High rate locally-correctable and locally-testable codes with sub-polynomial query complexity

    Full text link
    In this work, we construct the first locally-correctable codes (LCCs), and locally-testable codes (LTCs) with constant rate, constant relative distance, and sub-polynomial query complexity. Specifically, we show that there exist binary LCCs and LTCs with block length nn, constant rate (which can even be taken arbitrarily close to 1), constant relative distance, and query complexity exp(O~(logn))\exp(\tilde{O}(\sqrt{\log n})). Previously such codes were known to exist only with Ω(nβ)\Omega(n^{\beta}) query complexity (for constant β>0\beta > 0), and there were several, quite different, constructions known. Our codes are based on a general distance-amplification method of Alon and Luby~\cite{AL96_codes}. We show that this method interacts well with local correctors and testers, and obtain our main results by applying it to suitably constructed LCCs and LTCs in the non-standard regime of \emph{sub-constant relative distance}. Along the way, we also construct LCCs and LTCs over large alphabets, with the same query complexity exp(O~(logn))\exp(\tilde{O}(\sqrt{\log n})), which additionally have the property of approaching the Singleton bound: they have almost the best-possible relationship between their rate and distance. This has the surprising consequence that asking for a large alphabet error-correcting code to further be an LCC or LTC with exp(O~(logn))\exp(\tilde{O}(\sqrt{\log n})) query complexity does not require any sacrifice in terms of rate and distance! Such a result was previously not known for any o(n)o(n) query complexity. Our results on LCCs also immediately give locally-decodable codes (LDCs) with the same parameters

    Spanoids - An Abstraction of Spanning Structures, and a Barrier for LCCs

    Get PDF
    We introduce a simple logical inference structure we call a spanoid (generalizing the notion of a matroid), which captures well-studied problems in several areas. These include combinatorial geometry (point-line incidences), algebra (arrangements of hypersurfaces and ideals), statistical physics (bootstrap percolation), network theory (gossip / infection processes) and coding theory. We initiate a thorough investigation of spanoids, from computational and structural viewpoints, focusing on parameters relevant to the applications areas above and, in particular, to questions regarding Locally Correctable Codes (LCCs). One central parameter we study is the rank of a spanoid, extending the rank of a matroid and related to the dimension of codes. This leads to one main application of our work, establishing the first known barrier to improving the nearly 20-year old bound of Katz-Trevisan (KT) on the dimension of LCCs. On the one hand, we prove that the KT bound (and its more recent refinements) holds for the much more general setting of spanoid rank. On the other hand we show that there exist (random) spanoids whose rank matches these bounds. Thus, to significantly improve the known bounds one must step out of the spanoid framework. Another parameter we explore is the functional rank of a spanoid, which captures the possibility of turning a given spanoid into an actual code. The question of the relationship between rank and functional rank is one of the main questions we raise as it may reveal new avenues for constructing new LCCs (perhaps even matching the KT bound). As a first step, we develop an entropy relaxation of functional rank to create a small constant gap and amplify it by tensoring to construct a spanoid whose functional rank is smaller than rank by a polynomial factor. This is evidence that the entropy method we develop can prove polynomially better bounds than KT-type methods on the dimension of LCCs. To facilitate the above results we also develop some basic structural results on spanoids including an equivalent formulation of spanoids as set systems and properties of spanoid products. We feel that given these initial findings and their motivations, the abstract study of spanoids merits further investigation. We leave plenty of concrete open problems and directions

    Lifted Multiplicity Codes and the Disjoint Repair Group Property

    Get PDF
    Lifted Reed Solomon Codes (Guo, Kopparty, Sudan 2013) were introduced in the context of locally correctable and testable codes. They are multivariate polynomials whose restriction to any line is a codeword of a Reed-Solomon code. We consider a generalization of their construction, which we call lifted multiplicity codes. These are multivariate polynomial codes whose restriction to any line is a codeword of a multiplicity code (Kopparty, Saraf, Yekhanin 2014). We show that lifted multiplicity codes have a better trade-off between redundancy and a notion of locality called the t-disjoint-repair-group property than previously known constructions. More precisely, we show that, for t <=sqrt{N}, lifted multiplicity codes with length N and redundancy O(t^{0.585} sqrt{N}) have the property that any symbol of a codeword can be reconstructed in t different ways, each using a disjoint subset of the other coordinates. This gives the best known trade-off for this problem for any super-constant t < sqrt{N}. We also give an alternative analysis of lifted Reed Solomon codes using dual codes, which may be of independent interest

    Locality via Partially Lifted Codes

    Get PDF
    In error-correcting codes, locality refers to several different ways of quantifying how easily a small amount of information can be recovered from encoded data. In this work, we study a notion of locality called the s-Disjoint-Repair-Group Property (s-DRGP). This notion can interpolate between two very different settings in coding theory: that of Locally Correctable Codes (LCCs) when s is large - a very strong guarantee - and Locally Recoverable Codes (LRCs) when s is small - a relatively weaker guarantee. This motivates the study of the s-DRGP for intermediate s, which is the focus of our paper. We construct codes in this parameter regime which have a higher rate than previously known codes. Our construction is based on a novel variant of the lifted codes of Guo, Kopparty and Sudan. Beyond the results on the s-DRGP, we hope that our construction is of independent interest, and will find uses elsewhere

    2-Server PIR with sub-polynomial communication

    Full text link
    A 2-server Private Information Retrieval (PIR) scheme allows a user to retrieve the iith bit of an nn-bit database replicated among two servers (which do not communicate) while not revealing any information about ii to either server. In this work we construct a 1-round 2-server PIR with total communication cost nO(loglogn/logn)n^{O({\sqrt{\log\log n/\log n}})}. This improves over the currently known 2-server protocols which require O(n1/3)O(n^{1/3}) communication and matches the communication cost of known 3-server PIR schemes. Our improvement comes from reducing the number of servers in existing protocols, based on Matching Vector Codes, from 3 or 4 servers to 2. This is achieved by viewing these protocols in an algebraic way (using polynomial interpolation) and extending them using partial derivatives

    Relaxed Locally Correctable Codes with Improved Parameters

    Get PDF
    Locally decodable codes (LDCs) are error-correcting codes C: ?^k ? ?? that admit a local decoding algorithm that recovers each individual bit of the message by querying only a few bits from a noisy codeword. An important question in this line of research is to understand the optimal trade-off between the query complexity of LDCs and their block length. Despite importance of these objects, the best known constructions of constant query LDCs have super-polynomial length, and there is a significant gap between the best constructions and the known lower bounds in terms of the block length. For many applications it suffices to consider the weaker notion of relaxed LDCs (RLDCs), which allows the local decoding algorithm to abort if by querying a few bits it detects that the input is not a codeword. This relaxation turned out to allow decoding algorithms with constant query complexity for codes with almost linear length. Specifically, [{Ben-Sasson} et al., 2006] constructed a q-query RLDC that encodes a message of length k using a codeword of block length n = O_q(k^{1+O(1/?q)}) for any sufficiently large q, where O_q(?) hides some constant that depends only on q. In this work we improve the parameters of [{Ben-Sasson} et al., 2006] by constructing a q-query RLDC that encodes a message of length k using a codeword of block length O_q(k^{1+O(1/{q})}) for any sufficiently large q. This construction matches (up to a multiplicative constant factor) the lower bounds of [Jonathan Katz and Trevisan, 2000; Woodruff, 2007] for constant query LDCs, thus making progress toward understanding the gap between LDCs and RLDCs in the constant query regime. In fact, our construction extends to the stronger notion of relaxed locally correctable codes (RLCCs), introduced in [Tom Gur et al., 2018], where given a noisy codeword the correcting algorithm either recovers each individual bit of the codeword by only reading a small part of the input, or aborts if the input is detected to be corrupt

    Locally Decodable/Correctable Codes for Insertions and Deletions

    Get PDF
    Recent efforts in coding theory have focused on building codes for insertions and deletions, called insdel codes, with optimal trade-offs between their redundancy and their error-correction capabilities, as well as efficient encoding and decoding algorithms. In many applications, polynomial running time may still be prohibitively expensive, which has motivated the study of codes with super-efficient decoding algorithms. These have led to the well-studied notions of Locally Decodable Codes (LDCs) and Locally Correctable Codes (LCCs). Inspired by these notions, Ostrovsky and Paskin-Cherniavsky (Information Theoretic Security, 2015) generalized Hamming LDCs to insertions and deletions. To the best of our knowledge, these are the only known results that study the analogues of Hamming LDCs in channels performing insertions and deletions. Here we continue the study of insdel codes that admit local algorithms. Specifically, we reprove the results of Ostrovsky and Paskin-Cherniavsky for insdel LDCs using a different set of techniques. We also observe that the techniques extend to constructions of LCCs. Specifically, we obtain insdel LDCs and LCCs from their Hamming LDCs and LCCs analogues, respectively. The rate and error-correction capability blow up only by a constant factor, while the query complexity blows up by a poly log factor in the block length. Since insdel locally decodable/correctble codes are scarcely studied in the literature, we believe our results and techniques may lead to further research. In particular, we conjecture that constant-query insdel LDCs/LCCs do not exist
    corecore