Capacity Bounds for a Class of Interference Relay Channels

The capacity of a class of Interference Relay Channels (IRC) -the Injective Semideterministic IRC where the relay can only observe one of the sources- is investigated. We first derive a novel outer bound and two inner bounds which are based on a careful use of each of the available cooperative strategies together with the adequate interference decoding technique. The outer bound extends Telatar and Tse's work while the inner bounds contain several known results in the literature as special cases. Our main result is the characterization of the capacity region of the Gaussian class of IRCs studied within a fixed number of bits per dimension -constant gap. The proof relies on the use of the different cooperative strategies in specific SNR regimes due to the complexity of the schemes. As a matter of fact, this issue reveals the complex nature of the Gaussian IRC where the combination of a single coding scheme for the Gaussian relay and interference channel may not lead to a good coding scheme for this problem, even when the focus is only on capacity to within a constant gap over all possible fading statistics.Comment: 23 pages, 6 figures. Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Information Theory (revised version

Lecture Notes on Network Information Theory

These lecture notes have been converted to a book titled Network Information Theory published recently by Cambridge University Press. This book provides a significantly expanded exposition of the material in the lecture notes as well as problems and bibliographic notes at the end of each chapter. The authors are currently preparing a set of slides based on the book that will be posted in the second half of 2012. More information about the book can be found at http://www.cambridge.org/9781107008731/. The previous (and obsolete) version of the lecture notes can be found at http://arxiv.org/abs/1001.3404v4/

Side information aware source and channel coding in wireless networks

Signals in communication networks exhibit significant correlation, which can stem from the physical nature of the underlying sources, or can be created within the system. Current layered network architectures, in which, based on Shannon’s separation theorem, data is compressed and transmitted over independent bit-pipes, are in general not able to exploit such correlation efficiently. Moreover, this strictly layered architecture was developed for wired networks and ignore the broadcast and highly dynamic nature of the wireless medium, creating a bottleneck in the wireless network design. Technologies that exploit correlated information and go beyond the layered network architecture can become a key feature of future wireless networks, as information theory promises significant gains. In this thesis, we study from an information theoretic perspective, three distinct, yet fundamental, problems involving the availability of correlated information in wireless networks and develop novel communication techniques to exploit it efficiently. We first look at two joint source-channel coding problems involving the lossy transmission of Gaussian sources in a multi-terminal and a time-varying setting in which correlated side information is present in the network. In these two problems, the optimality of Shannon’s separation breaks down and separate source and channel coding is shown to perform poorly compared to the proposed joint source-channel coding designs, which are shown to achieve the optimal performance in some setups. Then, we characterize the capacity of a class of orthogonal relay channels in the presence of channel side information at the destination, and show that joint decoding and compression of the received signal at the relay is required to optimally exploit the available side information. Our results in these three different scenarios emphasize the benefits of exploiting correlated side information at the destination when designing a communication system, even though the nature of the side information and the performance measure in the three scenarios are quite different.Open Acces

Communication Sécurisée et Coopération dans les Réseaux sans Fil avec Interférences and of their Inverter

In this thesis, we conduct an information-theoretic study on two important aspects of wireless communications: the improvement of data throughput in interference-limited networks by means of cooperation between users and the strengthening of the security of transmissions with the help of feedback.In the first part of the thesis, we focus on the simplest model that encompasses interference and cooperation, the Interference Relay Channel (IRC). Our goal is to characterize within a fixed number of bits the capacity region of the Gaussian IRC, independent of any channel conditions. To do so, we derive a novel outer bound and two inner bounds. Specifically, the outer bound is obtained thanks to a nontrivial extension we propose of the injective semideterministic class of channels, originally derived by Telatar and Tse for the Interference Channel (IC).In the second part of the thesis, we investigate the Wiretap Channel with Generalized Feedback (WCGF) and our goal is to provide a general transmission strategy that encompasses the existing results for different feedback models found in the literature. To this end, we propose two different inner bounds on the capacity of the memoryless WCGF. We first derive an inner bound that is based on the use of joint source-channel coding, which introduces time dependencies between the feedback outputs and the channel inputs through different time blocks. We then introduce a second inner bound where the feedback link is used to generate a key that encrypts the message partially or completely.Dans cette thèse, nous menons une étude dans le cadre de la théorie de l'information sur deux questions importantes de la communication sans fil : l'amélioration du débit de données dans les réseaux avec interférence grâce à la coopération entre utilisateurs et le renforcement de la sécurité des transmissions à l'aide d'un signal de rétroaction.Dans la première partie de la thèse, nous nous concentrons sur le modèle le plus simple qui intègre à la fois l'interférence et la coopération, le canal à relais et interférence ou IRC (Interference Relay Channel). Notre objectif est de caractériser dans un nombre fixe de bits la région de capacité du IRC gaussien. À cette fin, nous dérivons une nouvelle limite supérieure de la capacité et deux stratégies de transmission. La limite supérieure est notamment obtenue grâce à une extension non triviale que nous proposons, de la classe de canaux semi-déterministe et injective à l'origine dérivée par Telatar et Tse pour le canal à interférence.Dans la seconde partie, nous étudions le canal avec espion et rétroaction généralisée ou WCGF (Wiretap Channel with Generalized Feedback). Notre objectif est de développer une stratégie de transmission générale qui englobe les résultats existants pour les différents modèles de rétroaction trouvés dans la littérature. À cette fin, nous proposons deux stratégies de transmission différentes sur la capacité du WCGF sans mémoire. Nous dérivons d'abord une stratégie qui est basée sur le codage source-canal conjoint. Nous introduisons ensuite une seconde stratégie où le signal de rétroaction est utilisé pour générer une clé secrète qui permet de chiffrer le message partiellement ou totalement

Cooperative diversity in wireless networks : algorithms and architectures

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2002.Includes bibliographical references (p. 179-187).To effectively combat multipath fading across multiple protocol layers in wireless networks, this dissertation develops energy-efficient algorithms that employ certain kinds of cooperation among terminals, and illustrates how one might incorporate these algorithms into various network architectures. In these techniques, sets of terminals relay signals for each other to create a virtual antenna array, trading off the costs-in power, bandwidth, and complexity-for the greater benefits gained by exploiting spatial diversity in the channel. By contrast, classical network architectures only employ point-to-point transmission and thus forego these benefits. After summarizing a model for the wireless channel, we present various practical cooperative diversity algorithms based upon different types of relay processing and re-encoding, both with and without limited feedback from the ultimate receivers. Using information theoretic tools, we show that all these algorithms can achieve full spatial diversity, as if each terminal had as many transmit antennas as the entire set of cooperating terminals. Such diversity gains translate into greatly improved robustness to fading for the same transmit power, or substantially reduced transmit power for the same level of performance. For example, with two cooperating terminals, power savings as much as 12 dB (a factor of sixteen) are possible for outage probabilities around one in a thousand. Finally, we discuss how the required level of complexity in the terminals makes different algorithms suitable for particular network architectures that arise in, for example, current cellular and ad-hoc networks.by J. Nicholas Laneman.Ph.D

Excessive... but not wasteful? Exploring young people's material consumption through the lens of divestment

Recent decades have been marked by growing awareness of the need for more sustainable consumption across society. Young people have been identified as well-placed to drive new (sustainable) modes of consumption through their participation in trend-setting youth cultures, as well as their roles as influential members of households. Yet, whilst the socio-cultural situation of young people makes them an appealing focus for sustainability promoters, the ways in which socio-cultural factors both enable and constrain their capacity to consume sustainably has been the subject of little investigation. The aim of this thesis has been to extend understanding of young people’s consumption in order to increase the efficacy of sustainability initiatives targeting youth. As a corrective to the preoccupation with acquisition that has dominated extant youth consumption studies, this project has taken divestment as its focus. Not only has this permitted a response to accusations of wastefulness amongst the young, it has focused much-needed attention on the socio-cultural forces underpinning young people’s relationships with their possessions. Based on qualitative research with young people in East Anglia, this thesis argues that the problem of waste (and thus unsustainability) in young people’s consumption does not (primarily) concern the flow of items into the waste stream. Rather, waste is produced when possessions fall out of use and remain unused over time, and this is driven by lack of agency in response to powerful socio-cultural forces. It is suggested that addressing this requires facilitating young people’s attempts to contest waste-making imperatives within extant cultural norms, and that sustainability promoters might attend to this through building young people’s competence, self-efficacy and desire to prolong the lives of their possessions. In sum, this thesis argues that young people can drive sustainable consumption if they are able to reclaim power over their consumption from the market and consumer culture

From Polar to Reed-Muller Codes:Unified Scaling, Non-standard Channels, and a Proven Conjecture

The year 2016, in which I am writing these words, marks the centenary of Claude Shannon, the father of information theory. In his landmark 1948 paper "A Mathematical Theory of Communication", Shannon established the largest rate at which reliable communication is possible, and he referred to it as the channel capacity. Since then, researchers have focused on the design of practical coding schemes that could approach such a limit. The road to channel capacity has been almost 70 years long and, after many ideas, occasional detours, and some rediscoveries, it has culminated in the description of low-complexity and provably capacity-achieving coding schemes, namely, polar codes and iterative codes based on sparse graphs. However, next-generation communication systems require an unprecedented performance improvement and the number of transmission settings relevant in applications is rapidly increasing. Hence, although Shannon's limit seems finally close at hand, new challenges are just around the corner. In this thesis, we trace a road that goes from polar to Reed-Muller codes and, by doing so, we investigate three main topics: unified scaling, non-standard channels, and capacity via symmetry. First, we consider unified scaling. A coding scheme is capacity-achieving when, for any rate smaller than capacity, the error probability tends to 0 as the block length becomes increasingly larger. However, the practitioner is often interested in more specific questions such as, "How much do we need to increase the block length in order to halve the gap between rate and capacity?". We focus our analysis on polar codes and develop a unified framework to rigorously analyze the scaling of the main parameters, i.e., block length, rate, error probability, and channel quality. Furthermore, in light of the recent success of a list decoding algorithm for polar codes, we provide scaling results on the performance of list decoders. Next, we deal with non-standard channels. When we say that a coding scheme achieves capacity, we typically consider binary memoryless symmetric channels. However, practical transmission scenarios often involve more complicated settings. For example, the downlink of a cellular system is modeled as a broadcast channel, and the communication on fiber links is inherently asymmetric. We propose provably optimal low-complexity solutions for these settings. In particular, we present a polar coding scheme that achieves the best known rate region for the broadcast channel, and we describe three paradigms to achieve the capacity of asymmetric channels. To do so, we develop general coding "primitives", such as the chaining construction that has already proved to be useful in a variety of communication problems. Finally, we show how to achieve capacity via symmetry. In the early days of coding theory, a popular paradigm consisted in exploiting the structure of algebraic codes to devise practical decoding algorithms. However, proving the optimality of such coding schemes remained an elusive goal. In particular, the conjecture that Reed-Muller codes achieve capacity dates back to the 1960s. We solve this open problem by showing that Reed-Muller codes and, in general, codes with sufficient symmetry are capacity-achieving over erasure channels under optimal MAP decoding. As the proof does not rely on the precise structure of the codes, we are able to show that symmetry alone guarantees optimal performance

Critical Infrastructures: Enhancing Preparedness & Resilience for the Security of Citizens and Services Supply Continuity: Proceedings of the 52nd ESReDA Seminar Hosted by the Lithuanian Energy Institute & Vytautas Magnus University

Critical Infrastructures Preparedness and Resilience is a major societal security issue in modern society. Critical Infrastructures (CIs) provide vital services to modern societies. Some CIs’ disruptions may endanger the security of the citizen, the safety of the strategic assets and even the governance continuity. The European Safety, Reliability and Data Association (ESReDA) as one of the most active EU networks in the field has initiated a project group on the “Critical Infrastructure/Modelling, Simulation and Analysis – Data”. The main focus of the project group is to report on the state of progress in MS&A of the CIs preparedness & resilience with a specific focus on the corresponding data availability and relevance. In order to report on the most recent developments in the field of the CIs preparedness & resilience MS&A and the availability of the relevant data, ESReDA held its 52nd Seminar on the following thematic: “Critical Infrastructures: Enhancing Preparedness & Resilience for the security of citizens and services supply continuity”. The 52nd ESReDA Seminar was a very successful event, which attracted about 50 participants from industry, authorities, operators, research centres, academia and consultancy companies.JRC.G.10-Knowledge for Nuclear Security and Safet

An alternative approach for assessing drug induced seizures, using non-protected larval zebrafish

As many as 9% of epileptic seizures occur as a result of drug toxicity. Identifying compounds with seizurogenic side effects is imperative for assessing compound safety during drug development, however, multiple marketed drugs still have clinical associations with seizures. Moreover, current approaches for assessing seizurogenicity, namely rodent EEG and behavioural studies, are highly resource intensive. This being the case, alternative approaches have been postulated for assessing compound seizurogenicity, including in vitro, in vivo, and in silico methods. In this thesis, experimental work is presented supporting the use of larval zebrafish as a candidate model organism for developing new seizure liability screening approaches. Larval zebrafish are translucent, meaning they are highly amenable to imaging approaches while offering a more ethical alternative to mammalian research. Zebrafish are furthermore highly fecund facilitating capacity for both high replication and high throughput. The primary goal of this thesis was to identify biomarkers in larval zebrafish, both behavioural and physiological, of compounds that increase seizure liability. The efficacy of this model organism for seizure liability testing was assessed through exposure of larval zebrafish to a mechanistically diverse array of compounds, selected for their varying degrees of seizurogenicity. Their central nervous systems were monitored using a variety of different techniques including light sheet microscopy, local field potential recordings, and behavioural monitoring. Data acquired from these measurements were then analysed using a variety of techniques including frequency domain analysis, clustering, functional connectivity, regression, and graph theory. Much of this analysis was exploratory in nature and is reflective of the infancy of the field. Experimental findings suggest that larval zebrafish are indeed sensitive to a wide range of pharmacological mechanisms of action and that drug actions are reflected by behavioural and direct measurements of brain activity. For example, local field potential recordings revealed electrographic responses akin to pre-ictal, inter-ictal and ictal events identified in humans. Ca2+ imaging using light sheet microscopy found global increases in fluorescent intensity and functional connectivity due to seizurogenic drug administration. In addition, [2] further functional connectivity and graph analysis revealed macroscale network changes correlated with drug seizurogenicity and mechanism of action. Finally, analysis of swimming behaviour revealed a strong correlation between high speed swimming behaviours and administration of convulsant compounds. In conclusion, presented herein are data demonstrating the power of functional brain imaging, LFP recordings, and behavioral monitoring in larval zebrafish for assessing the action of neuroactive drugs in a highly relevant vertebrate model. These data help us to understand the relevance of the 4 dpf larval zebrafish for neuropharmacological studies and reveal that even at this early developmental stage, these animals are highly responsive to a wide range of neuroactive compounds across multiple primary mechanisms of action. This represents compelling evidence of the potential utility of larval zebrafish as a model organism for seizure liability testing

Research reports: 1985 NASA/ASEE Summer Faculty Fellowship Program

A compilation of 40 technical reports on research conducted by participants in the 1985 NASA/ASEE Summer Faculty Fellowship Program at Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) is given. Weibull density functions, reliability analysis, directional solidification, space stations, jet stream, fracture mechanics, composite materials, orbital maneuvering vehicles, stellar winds and gamma ray bursts are among the topics discussed