547 research outputs found
A Simple Converse of Burnashev's Reliability
In a remarkable paper published in 1976, Burnashev determined the reliability
function of variable-length block codes over discrete memoryless channels with
feedback. Subsequently, an alternative achievability proof was obtained by
Yamamoto and Itoh via a particularly simple and instructive scheme. Their idea
is to alternate between a communication and a confirmation phase until the
receiver detects the codeword used by the sender to acknowledge that the
message is correct. We provide a converse that parallels the Yamamoto-Itoh
achievability construction. Besides being simpler than the original, the
proposed converse suggests that a communication and a confirmation phase are
implicit in any scheme for which the probability of error decreases with the
largest possible exponent. The proposed converse also makes it intuitively
clear why the terms that appear in Burnashev's exponent are necessary.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figure, updated missing referenc
Error Exponents for Variable-length Block Codes with Feedback and Cost Constraints
Variable-length block-coding schemes are investigated for discrete memoryless
channels with ideal feedback under cost constraints. Upper and lower bounds are
found for the minimum achievable probability of decoding error as
a function of constraints R, \AV, and on the transmission rate,
average cost, and average block length respectively. For given and \AV,
the lower and upper bounds to the exponent are
asymptotically equal as . The resulting reliability
function, , as a
function of and \AV, is concave in the pair (R, \AV) and generalizes
the linear reliability function of Burnashev to include cost constraints. The
results are generalized to a class of discrete-time memoryless channels with
arbitrary alphabets, including additive Gaussian noise channels with amplitude
and power constraints
Feedback Communication Systems with Limitations on Incremental Redundancy
This paper explores feedback systems using incremental redundancy (IR) with
noiseless transmitter confirmation (NTC). For IR-NTC systems based on {\em
finite-length} codes (with blocklength ) and decoding attempts only at {\em
certain specified decoding times}, this paper presents the asymptotic expansion
achieved by random coding, provides rate-compatible sphere-packing (RCSP)
performance approximations, and presents simulation results of tail-biting
convolutional codes.
The information-theoretic analysis shows that values of relatively close
to the expected latency yield the same random-coding achievability expansion as
with . However, the penalty introduced in the expansion by limiting
decoding times is linear in the interval between decoding times. For binary
symmetric channels, the RCSP approximation provides an efficiently-computed
approximation of performance that shows excellent agreement with a family of
rate-compatible, tail-biting convolutional codes in the short-latency regime.
For the additive white Gaussian noise channel, bounded-distance decoding
simplifies the computation of the marginal RCSP approximation and produces
similar results as analysis based on maximum-likelihood decoding for latencies
greater than 200. The efficiency of the marginal RCSP approximation facilitates
optimization of the lengths of incremental transmissions when the number of
incremental transmissions is constrained to be small or the length of the
incremental transmissions is constrained to be uniform after the first
transmission. Finally, an RCSP-based decoding error trajectory is introduced
that provides target error rates for the design of rate-compatible code
families for use in feedback communication systems.Comment: 23 pages, 15 figure
Joint source-channel coding with feedback
This paper quantifies the fundamental limits of variable-length transmission
of a general (possibly analog) source over a memoryless channel with noiseless
feedback, under a distortion constraint. We consider excess distortion, average
distortion and guaranteed distortion (-semifaithful codes). In contrast to
the asymptotic fundamental limit, a general conclusion is that allowing
variable-length codes and feedback leads to a sizable improvement in the
fundamental delay-distortion tradeoff. In addition, we investigate the minimum
energy required to reproduce source samples with a given fidelity after
transmission over a memoryless Gaussian channel, and we show that the required
minimum energy is reduced with feedback and an average (rather than maximal)
power constraint.Comment: To appear in IEEE Transactions on Information Theor
Balancing forward and feedback error correction for erasure channels with unreliable feedback
The traditional information theoretic approach to studying feedback is to
consider ideal instantaneous high-rate feedback of the channel outputs to the
encoder. This was acceptable in classical work because the results were
negative: Shannon pointed out that even perfect feedback often does not improve
capacity and in the context of symmetric DMCs, Dobrushin showed that it does
not improve the fixed block-coding error exponents in the interesting high rate
regime. However, it has recently been shown that perfect feedback does allow
great improvements in the asymptotic tradeoff between end-to-end delay and
probability of error, even for symmetric channels at high rate. Since gains are
claimed with ideal instantaneous feedback, it is natural to wonder whether
these improvements remain if the feedback is unreliable or otherwise limited.
Here, packet-erasure channels are considered on both the forward and feedback
links. First, the feedback channel is considered as a given and a strategy is
given to balance forward and feedback error correction in the suitable
information-theoretic limit of long end-to-end delays. At high enough rates,
perfect-feedback performance is asymptotically attainable despite having only
unreliable feedback! Second, the results are interpreted in the zero- sum case
of "half-duplex" nodes where the allocation of bandwidth or time to the
feedback channel comes at the direct expense of the forward channel. It turns
out that even here, feedback is worthwhile since dramatically lower asymptotic
delays are possible by appropriately balancing forward and feedback error
correction.
The results easily generalize to channels with strictly positive
zero-undeclared-error capacities.Comment: 20 pages, 6 pages, submitted to IEEE Transactions on Information
Theory, an earlier version was presented at ITA '07 in UCS
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