Information Design for Strategic Coordination of Autonomous Devices with Non-Aligned Utilities

In this paper, we investigate the coordination of autonomous devices with non-aligned utility functions. Both encoder and decoder are considered as players, that choose the encoding and the decoding in order to maximize their long-run utility functions. The topology of the point-to-point network under investigation, suggests that the decoder implements a strategy, knowing in advance the strategy of the encoder. We characterize the encoding and decoding functions that form an equilibrium, by using empirical coordination. The equilibrium solution is related to an auxiliary game in which both players choose some conditional distributions in order to maximize their expected utilities. This problem is closely related to the literature on "Information Design" in Game Theory. We also characterize the set of posterior distributions that are compatible with a rate-limited channel between the encoder and the decoder. Finally, we provide an example of non-aligned utility functions corresponding to parallel fading multiple access channels.Comment: IEEE Proc. of the Fifty-fourth Annual Allerton Conference Allerton House, UIUC, Illinois, USA September 27 - 30, 201

Joint Empirical Coordination of Source and Channel

In a decentralized and self-configuring network, the communication devices are considered as autonomous decision-makers that sense their environment and that implement optimal transmission schemes. It is essential that these autonomous devices cooperate and coordinate their actions, to ensure the reliability of the transmissions and the stability of the network. We study a point-to-point scenario in which the encoder and the decoder implement decentralized policies that are coordinated. The coordination is measured in terms of empirical frequency of symbols of source and channel. The encoder and the decoder perform a coding scheme such that the empirical distribution of the symbols is close to a target joint probability distribution. We characterize the set of achievable target probability distributions for a point-to-point source-channel model, in which the encoder is non-causal and the decoder is strictly causal i.e., it returns an action based on the observation of the past channel outputs. The objectives of the encoder and of the decoder, are captured by some utility function, evaluated with respect to the set of achievable target probability distributions. In this article, we investigate the maximization problem of a utility function that is common to both encoder and decoder. We show that the compression and the transmission of information are particular cases of the empirical coordination.Comment: accepted to IEEE Trans. on I

Coding for Communications and Secrecy

Shannon, in his landmark 1948 paper, developed a framework for characterizing the fundamental limits of information transmission. Among other results, he showed that reliable communication over a channel is possible at any rate below its capacity. In 2008, Arikan discovered polar codes; the only class of explicitly constructed low-complexity codes that achieve the capacity of any binary-input memoryless symmetric-output channel. Arikan's polar transform turns independent copies of a noisy channel into a collection of synthetic almost-noiseless and almost-useless channels. Polar codes are realized by sending data bits over the almost-noiseless channels and recovering them by using a low-complexity successive-cancellation (SC) decoder, at the receiver. In the first part of this thesis, we study polar codes for communications. When the underlying channel is an erasure channel, we show that almost all correlation coefficients between the erasure events of the synthetic channels decay rapidly. Hence, the sum of the erasure probabilities of the information-carrying channels is a tight estimate of the block-error probability of polar codes when used for communication over the erasure channel. We study SC list (SCL) decoding, a method for boosting the performance of short polar codes. We prove that the method has a numerically stable formulation in log-likelihood ratios. In hardware, this formulation increases the decoding throughput by 53% and reduces the decoder's size about 33%. We present empirical results on the trade-off between the length of the CRC and the performance gains in a CRC-aided version of the list decoder. We also make numerical comparisons of the performance of long polar codes under SC decoding with that of short polar codes under SCL decoding. Shannon's framework also quantifies the secrecy of communications. Wyner, in 1975, proposed a model for communications in the presence of an eavesdropper. It was shown that, at rates below the secrecy capacity, there exist reliable communication schemes in which the amount of information leaked to the eavesdropper decays exponentially in the block-length of the code. In the second part of this thesis, we study the rate of this decay. We derive the exact exponential decay rate of the ensemble-average of the information leaked to the eavesdropper in Wyner's model when a randomly constructed code is used for secure communications. For codes sampled from the ensemble of i.i.d. random codes, we show that the previously known lower bound to the exponent is exact. Our ensemble-optimal exponent for random constant-composition codes improves the lower bound extant in the literature. Finally, we show that random linear codes have the same secrecy power as i.i.d. random codes. The key to securing messages against an eavesdropper is to exploit the randomness of her communication channel so that the statistics of her observation resembles that of a pure noise process for any sent message. We study the effect of feedback on this approximation and show that it does not reduce the minimum entropy rate required to approximate a given process. However, we give examples where variable-length schemes achieve much larger exponents in this approximation in the presence of feedback than the exponents in systems without feedback. Upper-bounding the best exponent that block codes attain, we conclude that variable-length coding is necessary for achieving the improved exponents

Structure d’information, stratégies de communication et application aux réseaux distribués

This thesis studies distributed optimization problems with different observation structuresand application to wireless network and Smart Grids problems. Specifically, an asymmetricobservation structure between two agents is considered, where a first agent has full knowledgeabout the realization of a random state, and the other agent does not know anything about thisstate. In this context, the question is how to transmit information from the first agent to thesecond agent in order to use in an optimal way the communication resources. Several modelsare studied in this thesis. For all of them, a common element is that the information source hasto be encoded in an appropriate manner to optimize the use of the system’s configuration. Afirst model is studied where no dedicated channel for communication is available between agentsand they have the same objective function. Therefore, the only way communication is possible isthrough the actions chosen by agents. As actions are payoff relevant, the first agent has to findthe optimal tradeoff between transmission of information and payoff maximization. The informedagent encodes his knowledge about the state into his actions, which will be imperfectly observedby the second agent. The latter will decode the information and choose his actions in order tomaximize the common objective function. We use tools from information theory to characterizethis optimal tradeoff by an information constraint, and apply this scenario to a power controlproblem in an interference channel setting. Our new strategy (the coded power control ) givessome promising gains compare to classical approaches.In a second part, we consider that there exists a dedicated channel for communication, that isto say the actions of the informed agent are not payoff relevant and are only useful for transmissionof information. Furthermore, agents are supposed to have diverging interests, so that the informedagent does not necessarily have an incentive to send all his knowledge to the uninformed agent.Game theory and Cheap talk game in particular appears to be the right framework to analyzethis problem. We characterize the signal scheme that agents will agree on. This scheme willlead to a Nash Equilibrium, thus will optimize the way communication is done. This model is ofparticular interest for electrical vehicles networks where an electrical vehicle has to send his needin term of power to an aggregator which will choose an effective charging level for the electricalvehicle. The latter only cares about his need in term of power whereas the aggregator also takesinto account the network status. The considered model help to optimize the way the network isused.We finally consider a model with more than two agents, where the main goal is for all agentsto retrieve perfect observations of all past actions of all agents. This is of particular interest ina game theory point of view to characterize the long term expected utilities of the agents. Inthis model, we add an encoder who perfectly oberves all past actions and will help agents tohave perfect monitoring. In fact, this is possible if the right information constraint is satisfied.We thus characterized the latter, using a hybrid coding scheme combining classical informationtheoretic scheme and tools from graph theory.Cette thèse étudie des problèmes d’optimisation distribuée avec différentes structures d’observationset leurs applications aux réseaux sans fil et aux problèmes de Smart Grids. Spécifiquement,une structure d’observation asymétrique entre deux agents est considérée, où un premieragent a connaissance complète à propos de la réalisation d’un état aléatoire, et l’autre agent neconnaît rien à propos de cet état. Dans ce contexte, la question est de savoir comment transmettrede l’information depuis le premier agent vers le second agent dans le but d’utiliser de manièreoptimale les ressources de communication. Plusieurs modèles sont étudiés dans cette thèse. Pourtous, un élément commun est le fait que la source d’information doit être encodée de manièreappropriée pour optimiser l’utilisation de la configuration du système. Un premier modèle estétudié où aucun canal de communication n’est disponible entre les agents et ils ont une fonctiond’utilité commune. Cependant, le seul moyen de communiquer est via les actions choisiespar les agents. Comme les actions ont une influence sur le paiement, l’agent informé encode saconnaissance à propos de l’état dans ses actions, qui seront observées de manière imparfaite parle second agent. Ce dernier décodera l’information et choisira ses actions dans le but de maximiserla fonction objectif commune. Nous utilisons des outils de théorie de l’information pourcaractériser ce compromis optimal par une contrainte d’information, et appliquons ce scénario àun problème de contrôle de puissance pour un canal à interférence. Notre nouvelle stratégie (lecontrôle de puissance codé) donne des gains très prometteurs comparés aux approches classiques.Dans une seconde partie, nous considérons qu’il existe un canal dédié de communication, c’està-dire que les actions de l’agent informé n’ont pas d’influence sur le paiement et sont seulementutiles pour la transmission d’information. De plus, les agents sont supposés avoir des intérêtsdivergents, si bien que l’agent informé n’a pas nécessairement d’incitation à envoyer tout sonsavoir à l’agent non informé. La théorie des jeux et les jeux de « Cheap talk » en particulier sontle bon cadre pour analyser ce genre de problème. Nous caractérisons le schéma de signal sur lequelles agents se seront mis d’accord. Ce schéma amènera à un équilibre de Nash, est donc optimiserala façon dont la communication est faite. Ce modèle est d’un intérêt particulier pour les réseauxde véhicules électriques où un véhicule électrique doit envoyer son besoin en terme de puissancede charge à un aggrégateur qui choisira un niveau de charge effectif pour le véhicule électrique.Ce dernier ne se souciera que de son besoin, alors que l’aggrégateur se soucie également de l’étatdu réseau. Ce modèle aide à optimiser la façon dont le réseau est utilisé.Enfin, nous considérons un modèle avec plus de deux agents, où le but principal est pourtous les agents de retrouver l’observation parfaite des actions passées de tous les agents. Ceci estd’un intérêt très particulier d’un point de vue de la théorie des jeux pour caractériser les utilitésespérées de long terme des agents. Dans ce modèle, nous ajoutons un encodeur qui observeparfaitement toutes les actions passées et aidera les agents à obtenir l’observation parfaite. Enfait, ceci sera possible si la bonne contrainte d’information est satisfaite. Nous caractérisonsdonc cette dernière, en utilisant un schéma de codage hybride combinant des outils classiques dethéorie de l’information ainsi que des outils de la théorie des graphe

Neutral coding - A report based on an NRP work session

Neural coding by impulses and trains on single and multiple channels, and representation of information in nonimpulse carrier

Device-Independent Quantum Key Distribution

Cryptographic key exchange protocols traditionally rely on computational conjectures such as the hardness of prime factorisation to provide security against eavesdropping attacks. Remarkably, quantum key distribution protocols like the one proposed by Bennett and Brassard provide information-theoretic security against such attacks, a much stronger form of security unreachable by classical means. However, quantum protocols realised so far are subject to a new class of attacks exploiting implementation defects in the physical devices involved, as demonstrated in numerous ingenious experiments. Following the pioneering work of Ekert proposing the use of entanglement to bound an adversary's information from Bell's theorem, we present here the experimental realisation of a complete quantum key distribution protocol immune to these vulnerabilities. We achieve this by combining theoretical developments on finite-statistics analysis, error correction, and privacy amplification, with an event-ready scheme enabling the rapid generation of high-fidelity entanglement between two trapped-ion qubits connected by an optical fibre link. The secrecy of our key is guaranteed device-independently: it is based on the validity of quantum theory, and certified by measurement statistics observed during the experiment. Our result shows that provably secure cryptography with real-world devices is possible, and paves the way for further quantum information applications based on the device-independence principle.Comment: 5+1 pages in main text and methods with 4 figures and 1 table; 37 pages of supplementary materia