A Characterization of the Shannon Ordering of Communication Channels

The ordering of communication channels was first introduced by Shannon. In this paper, we aim to find a characterization of the Shannon ordering. We show that $W'$ contains $W$ if and only if $W$ is the skew-composition of $W'$ with a convex-product channel. This fact is used to derive a characterization of the Shannon ordering that is similar to the Blackwell-Sherman-Stein theorem. Two channels are said to be Shannon-equivalent if each one is contained in the other. We investigate the topologies that can be constructed on the space of Shannon-equivalent channels. We introduce the strong topology and the BRM metric on this space. Finally, we study the continuity of a few channel parameters and operations under the strong topology.Comment: 23 pages, presented in part at ISIT'17. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1702.0072

Topological Structures on DMC spaces

Two channels are said to be equivalent if they are degraded from each other. The space of equivalent channels with input alphabet $X$ and output alphabet $Y$ can be naturally endowed with the quotient of the Euclidean topology by the equivalence relation. A topology on the space of equivalent channels with fixed input alphabet $X$ and arbitrary but finite output alphabet is said to be natural if and only if it induces the quotient topology on the subspaces of equivalent channels sharing the same output alphabet. We show that every natural topology is $\sigma$-compact, separable and path-connected. On the other hand, if $|X|\geq 2$, a Hausdorff natural topology is not Baire and it is not locally compact anywhere. This implies that no natural topology can be completely metrized if $|X|\geq 2$. The finest natural topology, which we call the strong topology, is shown to be compactly generated, sequential and $T_4$. On the other hand, the strong topology is not first-countable anywhere, hence it is not metrizable. We show that in the strong topology, a subspace is compact if and only if it is rank-bounded and strongly-closed. We introduce a metric distance on the space of equivalent channels which compares the noise levels between channels. The induced metric topology, which we call the noisiness topology, is shown to be natural. We also study topologies that are inherited from the space of meta-probability measures by identifying channels with their Blackwell measures. We show that the weak-* topology is exactly the same as the noisiness topology and hence it is natural. We prove that if $|X|\geq 2$, the total variation topology is not natural nor Baire, hence it is not completely metrizable. Moreover, it is not locally compact anywhere. Finally, we show that the Borel $\sigma$-algebra is the same for all Hausdorff natural topologies.Comment: 43 pages, submitted to IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory and in part to ISIT201

Continuity of Channel Parameters and Operations under Various DMC Topologies

We study the continuity of many channel parameters and operations under various topologies on the space of equivalent discrete memoryless channels (DMC). We show that mutual information, channel capacity, Bhattacharyya parameter, probability of error of a fixed code, and optimal probability of error for a given code rate and blocklength, are continuous under various DMC topologies. We also show that channel operations such as sums, products, interpolations, and Ar{\i}kan-style transformations are continuous.Comment: 31 pages. Submitted to IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory and in part to ISIT201

On the Input-Degradedness and Input-Equivalence Between Channels

A channel $W$ is said to be input-degraded from another channel $W'$ if $W$ can be simulated from $W'$ by randomization at the input. We provide a necessary and sufficient condition for a channel to be input-degraded from another one. We show that any decoder that is good for $W'$ is also good for $W$. We provide two characterizations for input-degradedness, one of which is similar to the Blackwell-Sherman-Stein theorem. We say that two channels are input-equivalent if they are input-degraded from each other. We study the topologies that can be constructed on the space of input-equivalent channels, and we investigate their properties. Moreover, we study the continuity of several channel parameters and operations under these topologies.Comment: 30 pages. Submitted to IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory and in part to ISIT2017. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1701.0446

Oriented paths in n-chromatic digraphs

In this thesis, we try to treat the problem of oriented paths in n-chromatic digraphs. We first treat the case of antidirected paths in 5-chromatic digraphs, where we explain El-Sahili's theorem and provide an elementary and shorter proof of it. We then treat the case of paths with two blocks in n-chromatic digraphs with n greater than 4, where we explain the two different approaches of Addario-Berry et al. and of El-Sahili. We indicate a mistake in Addario-Berry et al.'s proof and provide a correction for it.Comment: 25 pages, Master thesis in Graph Theory at the Lebanese Universit

Ergodic Theory Meets Polarization. I: An Ergodic Theory for Binary Operations

An open problem in polarization theory is to determine the binary operations that always lead to polarization (in the general multilevel sense) when they are used in Ar{\i}kan style constructions. This paper, which is presented in two parts, solves this problem by providing a necessary and sufficient condition for a binary operation to be polarizing. This (first) part of the paper introduces the mathematical framework that we will use in the second part to characterize the polarizing operations. We define uniformity preserving, irreducible, ergodic and strongly ergodic operations and we study their properties. The concepts of a stable partition and the residue of a stable partition are introduced. We show that an ergodic operation is strongly ergodic if and only if all its stable partitions are their own residues. We also study the products of binary operations and the structure of their stable partitions. We show that the product of a sequence of binary operations is strongly ergodic if and only if all the operations in the sequence are strongly ergodic. In the second part of the paper, we provide a foundation of polarization theory based on the ergodic theory of binary operations that we develop in this part.Comment: 34 pages, 1 figure. Accepted to IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory and presented in part at ISIT'1

Polar Codes for Arbitrary DMCs and Arbitrary MACs

Polar codes are constructed for arbitrary channels by imposing an arbitrary quasigroup structure on the input alphabet. Just as with "usual" polar codes, the block error probability under successive cancellation decoding is $o(2^{-N^{1/2-\epsilon}})$, where $N$ is the block length. Encoding and decoding for these codes can be implemented with a complexity of $O(N\log N)$. It is shown that the same technique can be used to construct polar codes for arbitrary multiple access channels (MAC) by using an appropriate Abelian group structure. Although the symmetric sum capacity is achieved by this coding scheme, some points in the symmetric capacity region may not be achieved. In the case where the channel is a combination of linear channels, we provide a necessary and sufficient condition characterizing the channels whose symmetric capacity region is preserved by the polarization process. We also provide a sufficient condition for having a maximal loss in the dominant face.Comment: 32 pages, 1 figure. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1112.177

Polar Codes for Arbitrary Classical-Quantum Channels and Arbitrary cq-MACs

We prove polarization theorems for arbitrary classical-quantum (cq) channels. The input alphabet is endowed with an arbitrary Abelian group operation and an Ar{\i}kan-style transformation is applied using this operation. It is shown that as the number of polarization steps becomes large, the synthetic cq-channels polarize to deterministic homomorphism channels which project their input to a quotient group of the input alphabet. This result is used to construct polar codes for arbitrary cq-channels and arbitrary classical-quantum multiple access channels (cq-MAC). The encoder can be implemented in $O(N\log N)$ operations, where $N$ is the blocklength of the code. A quantum successive cancellation decoder for the constructed codes is proposed. It is shown that the probability of error of this decoder decays faster than $2^{-N^{\beta}}$ for any $\beta<\frac{1}{2}$.Comment: 30 pages. Submitted to IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory and in part to ISIT201