A New Algebraic Approach for String Reconstruction from Substring Compositions

We consider the problem of binary string reconstruction from the multiset of its substring compositions, i.e., referred to as the substring composition multiset, first introduced and studied by Acharya et al. We introduce a new algorithm for the problem of string reconstruction from its substring composition multiset which relies on the algebraic properties of the equivalent bivariate polynomial formulation of the problem. We then characterize specific algebraic conditions for the binary string to be reconstructed that guarantee the algorithm does not require any backtracking through the reconstruction, and, consequently, the time complexity is bounded polynomially. More specifically, in the case of no backtracking, our algorithm has a time complexity of $O(n^2)$ compared to the algorithm by Acharya et al., which has a time complexity of $O(n^2\log(n))$, where $n$ is the length of the binary string. Furthermore, it is shown that larger sets of binary strings are uniquely reconstructable by the new algorithm and without the need for backtracking leading to codebooks of reconstruction codes that are larger, by a linear factor in size, compared to the previously known construction by Pattabiraman et al., while having $O(n^2)$ reconstruction complexity

Repeat-Free Codes

In this paper we consider the problem of encoding data into repeat-free sequences in which sequences are imposed to contain any $k$-tuple at most once (for predefined $k$). First, the capacity and redundancy of the repeat-free constraint are calculated. Then, an efficient algorithm, which uses a single bit of redundancy, is presented to encode length-$n$ sequences for $k=2+2\log (n)$. This algorithm is then improved to support any value of $k$ of the form $k=a\log (n)$, for $1<a$, while its redundancy is $o(n)$. We also calculate the capacity of repeat-free sequences when combined with local constraints which are given by a constrained system, and the capacity of multi-dimensional repeat-free codes.Comment: 18 page