The Likelihood Encoder for Lossy Source Compression

In this work, a likelihood encoder is studied in the context of lossy source compression. The analysis of the likelihood encoder is based on a soft-covering lemma. It is demonstrated that the use of a likelihood encoder together with the soft-covering lemma gives alternative achievability proofs for classical source coding problems. The case of the rate-distortion function with side information at the decoder (i.e. the Wyner-Ziv problem) is carefully examined and an application of the likelihood encoder to the multi-terminal source coding inner bound (i.e. the Berger-Tung region) is outlined.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, ISIT 201

A Bit of Secrecy for Gaussian Source Compression

In this paper, the compression of an independent and identically distributed Gaussian source sequence is studied in an unsecure network. Within a game theoretic setting for a three-party noiseless communication network (sender Alice, legitimate receiver Bob, and eavesdropper Eve), the problem of how to efficiently compress a Gaussian source with limited secret key in order to guarantee that Bob can reconstruct with high fidelity while preventing Eve from estimating an accurate reconstruction is investigated. It is assumed that Alice and Bob share a secret key with limited rate. Three scenarios are studied, in which the eavesdropper ranges from weak to strong in terms of the causal side information she has. It is shown that one bit of secret key per source symbol is enough to achieve perfect secrecy performance in the Gaussian squared error setting, and the information theoretic region is not optimized by joint Gaussian random variables

A Rate-Distortion Based Secrecy System with Side Information at the Decoders

A secrecy system with side information at the decoders is studied in the context of lossy source compression over a noiseless broadcast channel. The decoders have access to different side information sequences that are correlated with the source. The fidelity of the communication to the legitimate receiver is measured by a distortion metric, as is traditionally done in the Wyner-Ziv problem. The secrecy performance of the system is also evaluated under a distortion metric. An achievable rate-distortion region is derived for the general case of arbitrarily correlated side information. Exact bounds are obtained for several special cases in which the side information satisfies certain constraints. An example is considered in which the side information sequences come from a binary erasure channel and a binary symmetric channel.Comment: 8 pages. Allerton 201

The Likelihood Encoder for Lossy Compression

A likelihood encoder is studied in the context of lossy source compression. The analysis of the likelihood encoder is based on the soft-covering lemma. It is demonstrated that the use of a likelihood encoder together with the soft-covering lemma yields simple achievability proofs for classical source coding problems. The cases of the point-to-point rate-distortion function, the rate-distortion function with side information at the decoder (i.e. the Wyner-Ziv problem), and the multi-terminal source coding inner bound (i.e. the Berger-Tung problem) are examined in this paper. Furthermore, a non-asymptotic analysis is used for the point-to-point case to examine the upper bound on the excess distortion provided by this method. The likelihood encoder is also related to a recent alternative technique using properties of random binning

Source-Channel Secrecy with Causal Disclosure

Imperfect secrecy in communication systems is investigated. Instead of using equivocation as a measure of secrecy, the distortion that an eavesdropper incurs in producing an estimate of the source sequence is examined. The communication system consists of a source and a broadcast (wiretap) channel, and lossless reproduction of the source sequence at the legitimate receiver is required. A key aspect of this model is that the eavesdropper's actions are allowed to depend on the past behavior of the system. Achievability results are obtained by studying the performance of source and channel coding operations separately, and then linking them together digitally. Although the problem addressed here has been solved when the secrecy resource is shared secret key, it is found that substituting secret key for a wiretap channel brings new insights and challenges: the notion of weak secrecy provides just as much distortion at the eavesdropper as strong secrecy, and revealing public messages freely is detrimental.Comment: Allerton 2012, 6 pages. Updated version includes acknowledgement

Rate-Distortion-Based Physical Layer Secrecy with Applications to Multimode Fiber

Optical networks are vulnerable to physical layer attacks; wiretappers can improperly receive messages intended for legitimate recipients. Our work considers an aspect of this security problem within the domain of multimode fiber (MMF) transmission. MMF transmission can be modeled via a broadcast channel in which both the legitimate receiver's and wiretapper's channels are multiple-input-multiple-output complex Gaussian channels. Source-channel coding analyses based on the use of distortion as the metric for secrecy are developed. Alice has a source sequence to be encoded and transmitted over this broadcast channel so that the legitimate user Bob can reliably decode while forcing the distortion of wiretapper, or eavesdropper, Eve's estimate as high as possible. Tradeoffs between transmission rate and distortion under two extreme scenarios are examined: the best case where Eve has only her channel output and the worst case where she also knows the past realization of the source. It is shown that under the best case, an operationally separate source-channel coding scheme guarantees maximum distortion at the same rate as needed for reliable transmission. Theoretical bounds are given, and particularized for MMF. Numerical results showing the rate distortion tradeoff are presented and compared with corresponding results for the perfect secrecy case.Comment: 30 pages, 5 figures, accepted to IEEE Transactions on Communication

A Carbon Nanofilament-Bead Necklace

Carbon nanofilaments with carbon beads grown on their surfaces were successfully synthesized reproducibly by a floating catalyst CVD method. The nanofilaments hosting the pearl-like structures typically show an average diameter of about 60 nm, which mostly consists of low-ordered graphite layers. The beads with diameter range 150−450 nm are composed of hundreds of crumpled and random graphite layers. The mechanism for the formation of these beaded nanofilaments is ascribed to two nucleation processes of the pyrolytic carbon deposition, arising from a temperature gradient between different parts of the reaction chamber. Furthermore, the Raman scattering properties of the beaded nanofilaments have been measured, as well as their confocal Raman G-line images. The Raman spectra reveal that that the trunks of the nanofilaments have better graphitic properties than the beads, which is consistent with the HRTEM analysis. The beaded nanofilaments are expected to have high potential applications in composites, which should exhibit both particle- and fiber-reinforcing functions for the host matrixes