We consider the zero-error capacity of deletion channels. Specifically, we consider the setting where we choose a codebook ${\cal C}$ consisting of strings of $n$ bits, and our model of the channel corresponds to an adversary who may delete up to $pn$ of these bits for a constant $p$. Our goal is to decode correctly without error regardless of the actions of the adversary. We consider what values of $p$ allow non-zero capacity in this setting. We suggest multiple approaches, one of which makes use of the natural connection between this problem and the problem of finding the expected length of the longest common subsequence of two random sequences.
We consider the class of channels formed from the concatenation of a deletion channel and a finite-state channel. For this class of channels, we show that the operational capacity is equal to the stationary capacity, which can be approached by a sequence of Markov processes with increasing Markovian orders. As a by-product, we show that the polar coding scheme constructed by Tal, Pfister, Fazeli and Vardy achieves the capacity of the deletion channel.
Improved Capacity Upper Bounds for the Deletion Channel using a Parallelized Blahut-Arimoto Algorithm
Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa（里斯本技术学院，里斯本大学）；Instituto de Telecomunicações and Departamento de Matemática, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa（电信研究所与数学系，里斯本技术学院，里斯本大学）
We develop a systematic approach, based on convex programming and real analysis, for obtaining upper bounds on the capacity of the binary deletion channel and, more generally, channels with i.i.d. insertions and deletions. Other than the classical deletion channel, we give a special attention to the Poisson-repeat channel introduced by Mitzenmacher and Drinea (IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, 2006). Our framework can be applied to obtain capacity upper bounds for any repetition distribution (the deletion and Poisson-repeat channels corresponding to the special cases of Bernoulli and Po…
We consider a new formulation of a class of synchronization error channels and derive analytical bounds and numerical estimates for the capacity of these channels. For the binary channel with only deletions, we obtain an expression for the symmetric information rate in terms of subsequence weights which reduces to a tight lower bound for small deletion probabilities. We are also able to exactly characterize the Markov-1 rate for the binary channel with only replications. For a channel that introduces deletions as well as replications of input symbols, we design approximating channels that para…
This paper presents the first proof of polarization for the deletion channel with a constant deletion rate and a regular hidden-Markov input distribution. A key part of this work involves representing the deletion channel using a trellis and describing the plus and minus polar-decoding operations on that trellis. In particular, the plus and minus operations can be seen as combining adjacent trellis stages to yield a new trellis with half as many stages. Using this viewpoint, we prove a weak polarization theorem for standard polar codes on the deletion channel. To achieve strong polarization, w…
Improved Lower Bounds on the Capacity of the Binary Deletion Channel via a Learning Approach to Run-Length Inputs
School of Engineering, The University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus（不列颠哥伦比亚大学工程学院）；Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Bilkent University（比尔肯特大学电气与电子工程系）
This paper presents a coding scheme for an insertion deletion substitution channel. We extend a previous scheme for the deletion channel where polar codes are modified by adding "guard bands" between segments. In the new scheme, each guard band is comprised of a middle segment of '1' symbols, and left and right segments of '0' symbols. Our coding scheme allows for a regular hidden-Markov input distribution, and achieves the information rate between the input and corresponding output of such a distribution. Thus, we prove that our scheme can be used to efficiently achieve the capacity of the ch…
We study codes that are list-decodable under insertions and deletions. Specifically, we consider the setting where a codeword over some finite alphabet of size $q$ may suffer from $δ$ fraction of adversarial deletions and $γ$ fraction of adversarial insertions. A code is said to be $L$-list-decodable if there is an (efficient) algorithm that, given a received word, reports a list of $L$ codewords that include the original codeword. Using the concept of synchronization strings, introduced by the first two authors [STOC 2017], we show some surprising results. We show that for every $0\leqδ<1$, e…
We prove that there exists an absolute constant $δ>0$ such any binary code $C\subset\{0,1\}^N$ tolerating $(1/2-δ)N$ adversarial deletions must satisfy $|C|\le 2^{\text{poly}\log N}$ and thus have rate asymptotically approaching 0. This is the first constant fraction improvement over the trivial bound that codes tolerating $N/2$ adversarial deletions must have rate going to 0 asymptotically. Equivalently, we show that there exists absolute constants $A$ and $δ>0$ such that any set $C\subset\{0,1\}^N$ of $2^{\log^A N}$ binary strings must contain two strings $c$ and $c'$ whose longest common su…
We consider binary error correcting codes when errors are deletions. A basic challenge concerning deletion codes is determining $p_0^{(adv)}$, the zero-rate threshold of adversarial deletions, defined to be the supremum of all $p$ for which there exists a code family with rate bounded away from 0 capable of correcting a fraction $p$ of adversarial deletions. A recent construction of deletion-correcting codes [Bukh et al 17] shows that $p_0^{(adv)} \ge \sqrt{2}-1$, and the trivial upper bound, $p_0^{(adv)}\le\frac{1}{2}$, is the best known. Perhaps surprisingly, we do not know whether or not $p…
Two of the most common models for channels with synchronisation errors are the Binary Deletion Channel with parameter $p$ ($\text{BDC}_p$) -- a channel where every bit of the codeword is deleted i.i.d with probability $p$, and the Poisson Repeat Channel with parameter $λ$ ($\text{PRC}_λ$) -- a channel where every bit of the codeword is repeated $\text{Poisson}(λ)$ times. Previous constructions based on synchronisation strings yielded codes with rates far lower than the capacities of these channels [CS19, GL18], and the only efficient construction to achieve capacity on the BDC at the time of w…
Given a probability distribution $\mathcal{D}$ over the non-negative integers, a $\mathcal{D}$-repeat channel acts on an input symbol by repeating it a number of times distributed as $\mathcal{D}$. For example, the binary deletion channel ($\mathcal{D}=Bernoulli$) and the Poisson repeat channel ($\mathcal{D}=Poisson$) are special cases. We say a $\mathcal{D}$-repeat channel is square-integrable if $\mathcal{D}$ has finite first and second moments. In this paper, we construct explicit codes for all square-integrable $\mathcal{D}$-repeat channels with rate arbitrarily close to the capacity, that…
This work gives an explicit construction of a family of error correcting codes for the binary deletion channel and for the Poisson repeat channel. In the binary deletion channel with parameter $p$ (BDC$_p$) every bit is deleted independently with probability $p$. A lower bound of $(1-p)/9$ is known on the capacity of the BDC$_p$ \cite{mitzenmacher2006simple}, yet no explicit construction is known to achieve this rate. We give an explicit family of codes of rate $(1-p)/16$, for every $p$. This improves upon the work of Guruswami and Li \cite{guruswami2017efficiently} that gave a construction of…
Channels with Input-Correlated Synchronization Errors
Technion - Israel Institute of Technology（以色列理工学院）；Instituto de Telecomunicações and Departamento de Matemática, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa（里斯本大学高等技术学院电信研究所与数学系）
Density evolution for protograph Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) codes is considered, and it is shown that the message-error rate falls double-exponentially with iterations whenever the degree-2 subgraph of the protograph is cycle-free and noise level is below threshold. Conditions for stability of protograph density evolution are established and related to the structure of the protograph. Using large-girth graphs, sequences of protograph LDPC codes with block-error threshold equal to bit-error threshold and block-error rate falling near-exponentially with blocklength are constructed determini…
This paper considers secure communication over free-space optical (FSO) links suffering from turbulence-induced fading. In particular, we study the average secrecy capacity of applying physical layer security to achieve security in an FSO communication system with binary-level on-off keying intensity modulation and threshold detection, a widely used system in FSO communication. We first define the instantaneous secrecy capacity for our system and then provide a lower bound of it, which is achieved based on a simple design principle for practical applications and yields a simpler equation. We n…
Correcting Contextual Deletions in DNA Nanopore Readouts
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign（伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校）；Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa（里斯本大学高等技术学院）；Instituto de Telecomunicações（电信研究所）
This paper studies spatial capacity in a stochastic wireless ad hoc network, where multi-stage probing and data transmission are sequentially performed. We propose a novel signal-to-interference-ratio (SIR) threshold based scheduling scheme, where by starting with the first probing, each transmitter iteratively decides to further probe or stay idle, depending on whether the estimated SIR in the proceeding probing is larger or smaller than a predefined threshold. Although one can assume that the transmitters are initially deployed according to a homogeneous Poisson point process (PPP), the SIR …
The deletion channel takes as input a bit string $\mathbf{x} \in \{0,1\}^n$, and deletes each bit independently with probability $q$, yielding a shorter string. The trace reconstruction problem is to recover an unknown string $\mathbf{x}$ from many independent outputs (called "traces") of the deletion channel applied to $\mathbf{x}$. We show that if $\mathbf{x}$ is drawn uniformly at random and $q < 1/2$, then $e^{O(\log^{1/2} n)}$ traces suffice to reconstruct $\mathbf{x}$ with high probability. The previous best bound, established in 2008 by Holenstein-Mitzenmacher-Panigrahy-Wieder, uses $n^…
In this paper, we propose a transmission scheme that achieves information theoretic security, without making assumptions on the eavesdropper's channel. This is achieved by a transmitter that deliberately introduces synchronization errors (insertions and/or deletions) based on a shared source of randomness. The intended receiver, having access to the same shared source of randomness as the transmitter, can resynchronize the received sequence. On the other hand, the eavesdropper's channel remains a synchronization error channel. We prove a secrecy capacity theorem, provide a lower bound on the s…
We propose coding techniques that limit the length of homopolymers runs, ensure the GC-content constraint, and are capable of correcting a single edit error in strands of nucleotides in DNA-based data storage systems. In particular, for given $\ell, ε > 0$, we propose simple and efficient encoders/decoders that transform binary sequences into DNA base sequences (codewords), namely sequences of the symbols A, T, C and G, that satisfy the following properties: (i) Runlength constraint: the maximum homopolymer run in each codeword is at most $\ell$, (ii) GC-content constraint: the GC-content of e…
We study natural examples of binary channels with synchronization errors. These include the duplication channel, which independently outputs a given bit once or twice, and geometric channels that repeat a given bit according to a geometric rule, with or without the possibility of bit deletion. We apply the general framework of Cheraghchi (STOC 2018) to obtain sharp analytical upper bounds on the capacity of these channels. Previously, upper bounds were known via numerical computations involving the computation of finite approximations of the channels by a computer and then using the obtained n…
Protograph low-density-parity-check (LDPC) are considered to design near-capacity low-rate codes over the binary erasure channel (BEC) and binary additive white Gaussian noise (BIAWGN) channel. For protographs with degree-one variable nodes and doubly-generalized LDPC (DGLDPC) codes, conditions are derived to ensure equality of bit-error threshold and block-error threshold. Using this condition, low-rate codes with block-error threshold close to capacity are designed and shown to have better error rate performance than other existing codes.
The scaling of coherent and non-coherent channel capacity is studied in a single-input multiple-output (SIMO) block Rayleigh fading channel as both the bandwidth and the number of receiver antennas go to infinity jointly with the transmit power fixed. The transmitter has no channel state information (CSI), while the receiver may have genie-provided CSI (coherent receiver), or the channel statistics only (non-coherent receiver). Our results show that if the available bandwidth is smaller than a threshold bandwidth which is proportional (up to leading order terms) to the square root of the numbe…
New capacity upper bounds are presented for the discrete-time Poisson channel with no dark current and an average-power constraint. These bounds are a simple consequence of techniques developed for the seemingly unrelated problem of upper bounding the capacity of binary deletion and repetition channels. Previously, the best known capacity upper bound in the regime where the average-power constraint does not approach zero was due to Martinez (JOSA B, 2007), which is re-derived as a special case of the framework developed in this paper. Furthermore, this framework is carefully instantiated in or…
This paper studies \emph{linear} and \emph{affine} error-correcting codes for correcting synchronization errors such as insertions and deletions. We call such codes linear/affine insdel codes. Linear codes that can correct even a single deletion are limited to have information rate at most $1/2$ (achieved by the trivial 2-fold repetition code). Previously, it was (erroneously) reported that more generally no non-trivial linear codes correcting $k$ deletions exist, i.e., that the $(k+1)$-fold repetition codes and its rate of $1/(k+1)$ are basically optimal for any $k$. We disprove this and show…
