Update-Efficient Regenerating Codes with Minimum Per-Node Storage

Regenerating codes provide an efficient way to recover data at failed nodes in distributed storage systems. It has been shown that regenerating codes can be designed to minimize the per-node storage (called MSR) or minimize the communication overhead for regeneration (called MBR). In this work, we propose a new encoding scheme for [n,d] error- correcting MSR codes that generalizes our earlier work on error-correcting regenerating codes. We show that by choosing a suitable diagonal matrix, any generator matrix of the [n,{\alpha}] Reed-Solomon (RS) code can be integrated into the encoding matrix. Hence, MSR codes with the least update complexity can be found. An efficient decoding scheme is also proposed that utilizes the [n,{\alpha}] RS code to perform data reconstruction. The proposed decoding scheme has better error correction capability and incurs the least number of node accesses when errors are present.Comment: Submitted to IEEE ISIT 201

Update-Efficiency and Local Repairability Limits for Capacity Approaching Codes

Motivated by distributed storage applications, we investigate the degree to which capacity achieving encodings can be efficiently updated when a single information bit changes, and the degree to which such encodings can be efficiently (i.e., locally) repaired when single encoded bit is lost. Specifically, we first develop conditions under which optimum error-correction and update-efficiency are possible, and establish that the number of encoded bits that must change in response to a change in a single information bit must scale logarithmically in the block-length of the code if we are to achieve any nontrivial rate with vanishing probability of error over the binary erasure or binary symmetric channels. Moreover, we show there exist capacity-achieving codes with this scaling. With respect to local repairability, we develop tight upper and lower bounds on the number of remaining encoded bits that are needed to recover a single lost bit of the encoding. In particular, we show that if the code-rate is $\epsilon$ less than the capacity, then for optimal codes, the maximum number of codeword symbols required to recover one lost symbol must scale as $\log1/\epsilon$. Several variations on---and extensions of---these results are also developed.Comment: Accepted to appear in JSA

Efficient Decoding of Topological Color Codes

Color codes are a class of topological quantum codes with a high error threshold and large set of transversal encoded gates, and are thus suitable for fault tolerant quantum computation in two-dimensional architectures. Recently, computationally efficient decoders for the color codes were proposed. We describe an alternate efficient iterative decoder for topological color codes, and apply it to the color code on hexagonal lattice embedded on a torus. In numerical simulations, we find an error threshold of 7.8% for independent dephasing and spin flip errors.Comment: 7 pages, LaTe