Wiretap and Gelfand-Pinsker Channels Analogy and its Applications

An analogy framework between wiretap channels (WTCs) and state-dependent point-to-point channels with non-causal encoder channel state information (referred to as Gelfand-Pinker channels (GPCs)) is proposed. A good sequence of stealth-wiretap codes is shown to induce a good sequence of codes for a corresponding GPC. Consequently, the framework enables exploiting existing results for GPCs to produce converse proofs for their wiretap analogs. The analogy readily extends to multiuser broadcasting scenarios, encompassing broadcast channels (BCs) with deterministic components, degradation ordering between users, and BCs with cooperative receivers. Given a wiretap BC (WTBC) with two receivers and one eavesdropper, an analogous Gelfand-Pinsker BC (GPBC) is constructed by converting the eavesdropper's observation sequence into a state sequence with an appropriate product distribution (induced by the stealth-wiretap code for the WTBC), and non-causally revealing the states to the encoder. The transition matrix of the state-dependent GPBC is extracted from WTBC's transition law, with the eavesdropper's output playing the role of the channel state. Past capacity results for the semi-deterministic (SD) GPBC and the physically-degraded (PD) GPBC with an informed receiver are leveraged to furnish analogy-based converse proofs for the analogous WTBC setups. This characterizes the secrecy-capacity regions of the SD-WTBC and the PD-WTBC, in which the stronger receiver also observes the eavesdropper's channel output. These derivations exemplify how the wiretap-GP analogy enables translating results on one problem into advances in the study of the other

The Sender-Excited Secret Key Agreement Model: Capacity, Reliability and Secrecy Exponents

We consider the secret key generation problem when sources are randomly excited by the sender and there is a noiseless public discussion channel. Our setting is thus similar to recent works on channels with action-dependent states where the channel state may be influenced by some of the parties involved. We derive single-letter expressions for the secret key capacity through a type of source emulation analysis. We also derive lower bounds on the achievable reliability and secrecy exponents, i.e., the exponential rates of decay of the probability of decoding error and of the information leakage. These exponents allow us to determine a set of strongly-achievable secret key rates. For degraded eavesdroppers the maximum strongly-achievable rate equals the secret key capacity; our exponents can also be specialized to previously known results. In deriving our strong achievability results we introduce a coding scheme that combines wiretap coding (to excite the channel) and key extraction (to distill keys from residual randomness). The secret key capacity is naturally seen to be a combination of both source- and channel-type randomness. Through examples we illustrate a fundamental interplay between the portion of the secret key rate due to each type of randomness. We also illustrate inherent tradeoffs between the achievable reliability and secrecy exponents. Our new scheme also naturally accommodates rate limits on the public discussion. We show that under rate constraints we are able to achieve larger rates than those that can be attained through a pure source emulation strategy.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figures; Submitted to the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory; Revised in Oct 201

Adaptive data acquisition for communication networks

In an increasing number of communication systems, such as sensor networks or local area networks within medical, financial or military institutions, nodes communicate information sources (e.g., video, audio) over multiple hops. Moreover, nodes have, or can acquire, correlated information sources from the environment, e.g., from data bases or from measurements. Among the new design problems raised by the outlined scenarios, two key issues are addressed in this dissertation: 1) How to preserve the consistency of sensitive information across multiple hops; 2) How to incorporate the design of actuation in the form of data acquisition and network probing in the optimization of the communication network. These aspects are investigated by using information-theoretic (source and channel coding) models, obtaining fundamental insights that have been corroborated by various illustrative examples. To address point 1), the problem of cascade source coding with side information is investigated. The motivating observation is that, in this class of problems, the estimate of the source obtained at the decoder cannot be generally reproduced at the encoder if it depends directly on the side information. In some applications, such as the one mentioned above, this lack of consistency may be undesirable, and a so called Common Reconstruction (CR) requirement, whereby one imposes that the encoder be able to agree on the decoder’s estimate, may be instead in order. The rate-distortion region is here derived for some special cases of the cascade source coding problem and of the related Heegard-Berger (HB) problem under the CR constraint. As for point 2), the work is motivated by the fact that, in order to enable, or to facilitate, the exchange of information, nodes of a communication network routinely take various types of actions, such as data acquisition or network probing. For instance, sensor nodes schedule the operation of their sensing devices to measure given physical quantities of interest, and wireless nodes probe the state of the channel via training. The problem of optimal data acquisition is studied for a cascade source coding problem, a distributed source coding problem and a two-way source coding problem assuming that the side information sequences can be controlled via the selection of cost-constrained actions. It is shown that a joint design of the description of the source and of the control signals used to guide the selection of the actions at downstream nodes is generally necessary for an efficient use of the available communication links. Instead, the problem of optimal channel probing is studied for a broadcast channel and a point-to-point link in which the decoder is interested in estimating not only the message, but also the state sequence. Finally, the problem of embedding information on the actions is studied for both the source and the channel coding set-ups described above

The structure of degradable quantum channels

Degradable quantum channels are among the only channels whose quantum and private classical capacities are known. As such, determining the structure of these channels is a pressing open question in quantum information theory. We give a comprehensive review of what is currently known about the structure of degradable quantum channels, including a number of new results as well as alternate proofs of some known results. In the case of qubits, we provide a complete characterization of all degradable channels with two dimensional output, give a new proof that a qubit channel with two Kraus operators is either degradable or anti-degradable and present a complete description of anti-degradable unital qubit channels with a new proof. For higher output dimensions we explore the relationship between the output and environment dimensions ($d_B$ and $d_E$ respectively) of degradable channels. For several broad classes of channels we show that they can be modeled with a environment that is "small" in the sense $d_E \leq d_B$. Perhaps surprisingly, we also present examples of degradable channels with ``large'' environments, in the sense that the minimal dimension $d_E > d_B$. Indeed, one can have $d_E > \tfrac{1}{4} d_B^2$. In the case of channels with diagonal Kraus operators, we describe the subclass which are complements of entanglement breaking channels. We also obtain a number of results for channels in the convex hull of conjugations with generalized Pauli matrices. However, a number of open questions remain about these channels and the more general case of random unitary channels.Comment: 42 pages, 3 figures, Web and paper abstract differ; (v2 contains only minor typo corrections

Entanglement-assisted private communication over quantum broadcast channels

We consider entanglement-assisted (EA) private communication over a quantum broadcast channel, in which there is a single sender and multiple receivers. We divide the receivers into two sets: the decoding set and the malicious set. The decoding set and the malicious set can either be disjoint or can have a finite intersection. For simplicity, we say that a single party Bob has access to the decoding set and another party Eve has access to the malicious set, and both Eve and Bob have access to the pre-shared entanglement with Alice. The goal of the task is for Alice to communicate classical information reliably to Bob and securely against Eve, and Bob can take advantage of pre-shared entanglement with Alice. In this framework, we establish a lower bound on the one-shot EA private capacity. When there exists a quantum channel mapping the state of the decoding set to the state of the malicious set, such a broadcast channel is said to be degraded. We establish an upper bound on the one-shot EA private capacity in terms of smoothed min- and max-entropies for such channels. In the limit of a large number of independent channel uses, we prove that the EA private capacity of a degraded quantum broadcast channel is given by a single-letter formula. Finally, we consider two specific examples of degraded broadcast channels and find their capacities. In the first example, we consider the scenario in which one part of Bob's laboratory is compromised by Eve. We show that the capacity for this protocol is given by the conditional quantum mutual information of a quantum broadcast channel, and so we thus provide an operational interpretation to the dynamic counterpart of the conditional quantum mutual information. In the second example, Eve and Bob have access to mutually exclusive sets of outputs of a broadcast channel.Comment: v2: 23 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in the special issue "Shannon's Information Theory 70 years on: applications in classical and quantum physics" for Journal of Physics