Distributed matrix computations -- matrix-matrix or matrix-vector multiplications -- are well-recognized to suffer from the problem of stragglers (slow or failed worker nodes). Much of prior work in this area is (i) either sub-optimal in terms of its straggler resilience, or (ii) suffers from numerical problems, i.e., there is a blow-up of round-off errors in the decoded result owing to the high condition numbers of the corresponding decoding matrices. Our work presents convolutional coding approach to this problem that removes these limitations. It is optimal in terms of its straggler resilience, and has excellent numerical robustness as long as the workers' storage capacity is slightly higher than the fundamental lower bound. Moreover, it can be decoded using a fast peeling decoder that only involves add/subtract operations. Our second approach has marginally higher decoding complexity than the first one, but allows us to operate arbitrarily close to the lower bound. Its numerical robustness can be theoretically quantified by deriving a computable upper bound on the worst case condition number over all possible decoding matrices by drawing connections with the properties of large Toeplitz matrices. All above claims are backed up by extensive experiments done on the AWS cloud platform.
In this paper we give a compact presentation of the theory of abstract spaces for convolutional codes and convolutional encoders, and show a connection between them that seems to be missing in the literature. We use it for a short proof of two facts: the size of a convolutional encoder of a polynomial matrix is at least its inner degree, and the minimal encoder has the size of the external degree if the matrix is reduced.
Higher-dimensional analogs of the predictable degree property and column reducedness are defined, and it is proved that the two properties are equivalent. It is shown that every multidimensional convolutional code has, what is called, a minimal reduced polynomial resolution. It is uniquely determined (up to isomorphism) and leads to a number of important integer invariants of the code generalizing classical Forney's indices.
The distributed index coding problem is studied, whereby multiple messages are stored at different servers to be broadcast to receivers with side information. First, the existing composite coding scheme is enhanced for the centralized (single-server) index coding problem, which is then merged with fractional partitioning of servers to yield a new coding scheme for distributed index coding. New outer bounds on the capacity region are also established. For 213 out of 218 non-isomorphic distributed index coding problems with four messages the achievable sum-rate of the proposed distributed compos…
We consider a distributed source coding system in which several observations are communicated to the decoder using limited transmission rate. The observations must be separately coded. We introduce a robust distributed coding scheme which flexibly trades off between system robustness and compression efficiency. The optimality of this coding scheme is proved for various special cases.
We propose an efficient Adaptive Random Convolutional Network Coding (ARCNC) algorithm to address the issue of field size in random network coding. ARCNC operates as a convolutional code, with the coefficients of local encoding kernels chosen randomly over a small finite field. The lengths of local encoding kernels increase with time until the global encoding kernel matrices at related sink nodes all have full rank. Instead of estimating the necessary field size a priori, ARCNC operates in a small finite field. It adapts to unknown network topologies without prior knowledge, by locally increme…
Random network coding recently attracts attention as a technique to disseminate information in a network. This paper considers a non-coherent multi-shot network, where the unknown and time-variant network is used several times. In order to create dependencies between the different shots, particular convolutional codes in rank metric are used. These codes are so-called (partial) unit memory ((P)UM) codes, i.e., convolutional codes with memory one. First, distance measures for convolutional codes in rank metric are shown and two constructions of (P)UM codes in rank metric based on the generator …
We show how to protect a stream of quantum information from decoherence induced by a noisy quantum communication channel. We exploit preshared entanglement and a convolutional coding structure to develop a theory of entanglement-assisted quantum convolutional coding. Our construction produces a Calderbank-Shor-Steane (CSS) entanglement-assisted quantum convolutional code from two arbitrary classical binary convolutional codes. The rate and error-correcting properties of the classical convolutional codes directly determine the corresponding properties of the resulting entanglement-assisted quan…
In this paper, we study the capacity region of the general distributed index coding. In contrast to the traditional centralized index coding where a single server contains all $n$ messages requested by the receivers, in the distributed index coding there are $2^n-1$ servers, each containing a unique non-empty subset $J$ of the messages and each is connected to all receivers via a noiseless independent broadcast link with an arbitrary capacity $C_J \ge 0$. First, we generalize the existing polymatroidal outer bound on the capacity region of the centralized problem to the distributed case. Next,…
We consider an \textit{Adaptive Random Convolutional Network Coding} (ARCNC) algorithm to address the issue of field size in random network coding for multicast, and study its memory and decoding delay performances through both analysis and numerical simulations. ARCNC operates as a convolutional code, with the coefficients of local encoding kernels chosen randomly over a small finite field. The cardinality of local encoding kernels increases with time until the global encoding kernel matrices at related sink nodes have full rank.ARCNC adapts to unknown network topologies without prior knowled…
Distributed arithmetic coding (DAC) has been shown to be effective for Slepian-Wolf coding, especially for short data blocks. In this letter, we propose to use the DAC to compress momery-correlated sources. More specifically, the correlation between sources is modeled as a hidden Markov process. Experimental results show that the performance is close to the theoretical Slepian-Wolf limit.
Index coding is often studied with the assumption that a single source has all the messages requested by the receivers. We refer to this as \emph{centralized} index coding. In contrast, this paper focuses on \emph{distributed} index coding and addresses the following question: How does the availability of messages at distributed sources (storage nodes) affect the solutions and achievable rates of index coding? An extension to the work of Arbabjolfaei et al. in ISIT 2013 is presented when distributed sources communicate via a semi-deterministic multiple access channel (MAC) to simultaneous rece…
In this paper, we give a distributed joint source channel coding scheme for arbitrary correlated sources for arbitrary point in the Slepian-Wolf rate region, and arbitrary link capacities using LDPC codes. We consider the Slepian-Wolf setting of two sources and one destination, with one of the sources derived from the other source by some correlation model known at the decoder. Distributed encoding and separate decoding is used for the two sources. We also give a distributed source coding scheme when the source correlation has memory to achieve any point in the Slepian-Wolf rate achievable reg…
We present algorithms for initializing a convolutional network coding scheme in networks that may contain cycles. An initialization process is needed if the network is unknown or if local encoding kernels are chosen randomly. During the initialization process every source node transmits basis vectors and every sink node measures the impulse response of the network. The impulse response is then used to find a relationship between the transmitted and the received symbols, which is needed for a decoding algorithm and to find the set of all achievable rates. Unlike acyclic networks, for which it i…
We show that polar codes can be used to achieve the rate-distortion functions in the problem of hierarchical source coding also known as the successive refinement problem. We also analyze the distributed version of this problem, constructing a polar coding scheme that achieves the rate distortion functions for successive refinement with side information.
A subspace-based approach for rate-adaptive distributed source coding (DSC) based on discrete Fourier transform (DFT) codes is developed. Punctured DFT codes can be used to implement rate-adaptive source coding, however they perform poorly after even moderate puncturing since the performance of the subspace error localization degrades severely. The proposed subspace-based error localization extends and improves the existing one, based on additional syndrome, and is naturally suitable for rate-adaptive distributed source coding architecture.
Traditional distributed source coding rarely considers the possible link between separate encoders. However, the broadcast nature of wireless communication in sensor networks provides a free gossip mechanism which can be used to simplify encoding/decoding and reduce transmission power. Using this broadcast advantage, we present a new two-encoder scheme which imitates the ping-pong game and has a successive approximation structure. For the quadratic Gaussian case, we prove that this scheme is successively refinable on the {sum-rate, distortion pair} surface, which is characterized by the rate-d…
Distributed source coding schemes are typically based on the use of channels codes as source codes. In this paper we propose a new paradigm, termed "distributed arithmetic coding", which exploits the fact that arithmetic codes are good source as well as channel codes. In particular, we propose a distributed binary arithmetic coder for Slepian-Wolf coding with decoder side information, along with a soft joint decoder. The proposed scheme provides several advantages over existing Slepian-Wolf coders, especially its good performance at small block lengths, and the ability to incorporate arbitrary…
In distributed multilevel diversity coding, $K$ correlated sources (each with $K$ components) are encoded in a distributed manner such that, given the outputs from any $α$ encoders, the decoder can reconstruct the first $α$ components of each of the corresponding $α$ sources. For this problem, the optimality of a multilayer Slepian-Wolf coding scheme based on binning and superposition is established when $K\leq 3$. The same conclusion is shown to hold for general $K$ under a certain symmetry condition, which generalizes a celebrated result by Yeung and Zhang.
In this paper, convolutional network coding is formulated by means of matrix power series representation of the local encoding kernel (LEK) matrices and global encoding kernel (GEK) matrices to establish its theoretical fundamentals for practical implementations. From the encoding perspective, the GEKs of a convolutional network code (CNC) are shown to be uniquely determined by its LEK matrix $K(z)$ if $K_0$, the constant coefficient matrix of $K(z)$, is nilpotent. This will simplify the CNC design because a nilpotent $K_0$ suffices to guarantee a unique set of GEKs. Besides, the relation betw…
We introduce a distributed source coding scheme called successive Wyner-Ziv coding. We show that any point in the rate region of the quadratic Gaussian CEO problem can be achieved via the successive Wyner-Ziv coding. The concept of successive refinement in the single source coding is generalized to the distributed source coding scenario, which we refer to as distributed successive refinement. For the quadratic Gaussian CEO problem, we establish a necessary and sufficient condition for distributed successive refinement, where the successive Wyner-Ziv coding scheme plays an important role.
In this paper, we introduce a model of a single-failure locally recoverable distributed storage system. This model appears to give rise to a problem seemingly dual of the well-studied index coding problem. The relation between the dimensions of an optimal index code and optimal distributed storage code of our model has been established in this paper. We also show some extensions to vector codes.
Two concatenated coding schemes incorporating algebraic Reed-Solomon (RS) codes and polarization-adjusted convolutional (PAC) codes are proposed. Simulation results show that at a bit error rate of $10^{-5}$, a concatenated scheme using RS and PAC codes has more than $0.25$ dB coding gain over the NASA standard concatenation scheme, which uses RS and convolutional codes.
In this paper, we propose a lattice-based robust distributed source coding system for two correlated sources and provide a detailed performance analysis under the high resolution assumption. It is shown, among other things, that, in the asymptotic regime where 1) the side distortion approaches 0 and 2) the ratio between the central and side distortions approaches 0, our scheme is capable of achieving the information-theoretic limit of quadratic multiple description coding when the two sources are identical, whereas a variant of the random coding scheme by Chen and Berger with Gaussian codes ha…
In this paper, we consider general two-way relay networks (TWRNs) with two source and N relay nodes. A distributed differential space time coding with analog network coding (DDSTC-ANC) scheme is proposed. A simple blind estimation and a differential signal detector are developed to recover the desired signal at each source. The pairwise error probability (PEP) and block error rate (BLER) of the DDSTC-ANC scheme are analyzed. Exact and simplified PEP expressions are derived. To improve the system performance, the optimum power allocation (OPA) between the source and relay nodes is determined ba…
In source coding, either with or without side information at the decoder, the ultimate performance can be achieved by means of random binning. Structured binning into cosets of performing channel codes has been successfully employed in practical applications. In this letter it is formally shown that various convolutional- and turbo-syndrome decoding algorithms proposed in literature lead in fact to the same estimate. An equivalent implementation is also delineated by directly tackling syndrome decoding as a maximum a posteriori probability problem and solving it by means of iterative message-p…
This paper investigates the decoding process of asynchronous convolutional-coded physical-layer network coding (PNC) systems. Specifically, we put forth a layered decoding framework for convolutional-coded PNC consisting of three layers: symbol realignment layer, codeword realignment layer, and joint channel-decoding network coding (Jt-CNC) decoding layer. Our framework can deal with phase asynchrony and symbol arrival-time asynchrony between the signals simultaneously transmitted by multiple sources. A salient feature of this framework is that it can handle both fractional and integral symbol…
Motivated by applications in distributed storage and distributed computation, we introduce embedded index coding (EIC). EIC is a type of distributed index coding in which nodes in a distributed system act as both senders and receivers of information. We show how embedded index coding is related to index coding in general, and give characterizations and bounds on the communication costs of optimal embedded index codes. We also define task-based EIC, in which each sending node encodes and sends data blocks independently of the other nodes. Task-based EIC is more computationally tractable and has…
This paper presents a variable-length decision-feedback scheme that uses tail-biting convolutional codes and the tail-biting Reliability-Output Viterbi Algoritm (ROVA). Comparing with recent results in finite-blocklength information theory, simulation results for both the BSC and the AWGN channel show that the decision-feedback scheme using ROVA can surpass the random-coding lower bound on throughput for feedback codes at average blocklengths less than 100 symbols. This paper explores ROVA-based decision feedback both with decoding after every symbol and with decoding limited to a small number…
In this paper we provide sufficient conditions for lossy transmission of functions of correlated data over a multiple access channel (MAC). The conditions obtained can be shown as generalized version of Yamamoto's result. We also obtain efficient joint source-channel coding schemes for transmission of discrete and continuous alphabet sources to recover the function values. Keywords: Joint source-channel coding, Graph coloring, Lipschitz functions, Correlated sources.
This paper studies the optimization of zero-delay analog mappings in a network setting that involves distributed coding. The cost surface is known to be non-convex, and known greedy methods tend to get trapped in poor locally optimal solutions that depend heavily on initialization. We derive an optimization algorithm based on the principles of "deterministic annealing", a powerful global optimization framework that has been successfully employed in several disciplines, including, in our recent work, to a simple zero-delay analog communications problem. We demonstrate strict superiority over th…
In index coding, a server broadcasts multiple messages to their respective receivers, each with some side information that can be utilized to reduce the amount of communication from the server. Distributed index coding is an extension of index coding in which the messages are broadcast from multiple servers, each storing different subsets of the messages. In this paper, the optimal tradeoff among the message rates and the server broadcast rates, which is defined formally as the capacity region, is studied for a general distributed index coding problem. Inner and outer bounds on the capacity re…
Unitary space-time modulation is known to be an efficient means to communicate over non-coherent Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) channels. In this letter, differential unitary space-time coding and non-coherent space-time coding for the training based approach of Kim and Tarokh are addressed. For this approach, necessary and sufficient conditions for multi-group decodability are derived in a simple way assuming a Generalized Likelihood Ratio Test receiver and a unitary codebook. Extending Kim and Tarokh's approach for colocated MIMO systems, a novel training based approach to distributed…
The distributed source coding problem is considered when the sensors, or encoders, are under Byzantine attack; that is, an unknown number of sensors have been reprogrammed by a malicious intruder to undermine the reconstruction at the fusion center. Three different forms of the problem are considered. The first is a variable-rate setup, in which the decoder adaptively chooses the rates at which the sensors transmit. An explicit characterization of the variable-rate minimum achievable sum rate is stated, given by the maximum entropy over the set of distributions indistinguishable from the true …
Low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes with the parity-based approach for distributed joint source channel coding (DJSCC) with decoder side information is described in this paper. The parity-based approach is theoretical limit achievable. Different edge degree distributions are used for source variable nodes and parity variable nodes. Particularly, the codeword-averaged density evolution (CADE) is presented for asymmetrically correlated nonuniform sources over the asymmetric memoryless transmission channel. Extensive simulations show that the splitting of variable nodes can improve the coding e…
In this paper, a two-relay full-duplex asynchronous cooperative network with the amplify-and-forward (AF) protocol is considered. We propose two distributed space-time coding schemes for the cases with and without cross-talks, respectively. In the first case, each relay can receive the signal sent by the other through the cross-talk link. We first study the feasibility of cross-talk cancellation in this network and show that the cross-talk interference cannot be removed well. For this reason, we design space-time codes by utilizing the cross-talk signals instead of removing them. In the other …
In the distributed coding of correlated sources, the problem of characterizing the joint probability distribution of a pair of random variables satisfying an n-letter Markov chain arises. The exact solution of this problem is intractable. In this paper, we seek a single-letter necessary condition for this n-letter Markov chain. To this end, we propose a new data processing inequality on a new measure of correlation by means of spectrum analysis. Based on this new data processing inequality, we provide a single-letter necessary condition for the required joint probability distribution. We apply…
We consider distributed gradient descent in the presence of stragglers. Recent work on \em gradient coding \em and \em approximate gradient coding \em have shown how to add redundancy in distributed gradient descent to guarantee convergence even if some workers are \em stragglers\em---that is, slow or non-responsive. In this work we propose an approximate gradient coding scheme called \em Stochastic Gradient Coding \em (SGC), which works when the stragglers are random. SGC distributes data points redundantly to workers according to a pair-wise balanced design, and then simply ignores the strag…
We present a general theory of entanglement-assisted quantum convolutional coding. The codes have a convolutional or memory structure, they assume that the sender and receiver share noiseless entanglement prior to quantum communication, and they are not restricted to possess the Calderbank-Shor-Steane structure as in previous work. We provide two significant advances for quantum convolutional coding theory. We first show how to "expand" a given set of quantum convolutional generators. This expansion step acts as a preprocessor for a polynomial symplectic Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization procedur…
We apply the latest advances in machine learning with deep neural networks to the tasks of radio modulation recognition, channel coding recognition, and spectrum monitoring. This paper first proposes an identification algorithm for space-time block coding of a signal. The feature between spatial multiplexing and Alamouti signals is extracted by adapting convolutional neural networks after preprocessing the received sequence. Unlike other algorithms, this method requires no prior information of channel coefficients and noise power, and consequently is well-suited for noncooperative contexts. Re…
Distributed source coding is traditionally viewed in the block coding context -- all the source symbols are known in advance at the encoders. This paper instead considers a streaming setting in which iid source symbol pairs are revealed to the separate encoders in real time and need to be reconstructed at the decoder with some tolerable end-to-end delay using finite rate noiseless channels. A sequential random binning argument is used to derive a lower bound on the error exponent with delay and show that both ML decoding and universal decoding achieve the same positive error exponents inside t…
This paper investigates the distributed space-time (ST) coding proposals for the future Digital Video Broadcasting--Next Generation Handheld (DVB-NGH) standard. We first theoretically show that the distributed MIMO scheme is the best broadcasting scenario in terms of channel capacity. Consequently we evaluate the performance of several ST coding proposals for DVB-NGH with practical system specifications and channel conditions. Simulation results demonstrate that the 3D code is the best ST coding solution for broadcasting in the distributed MIMO scenario.
Three science and engineering problems of recent interests -index coding, locally recoverable distributed storage, and guessing games on graphs- are discussed and the connection between their optimal solutions is elucidated. By generalizing recent results by Shanmugam and Dimakis and by Mazumdar on the complementarity between the optimal broadcast rate of an index coding problem on a directed graph and the normalized rate of a locally recoverable distributed storage problem on the same graph, it is shown that the capacity region and the optimal rate region of these two problems are complementa…
The convolutional sparse model has recently gained increasing attention in the signal and image processing communities, and several methods have been proposed for solving the pursuit problem emerging from it -- in particular its convex relaxation, Basis Pursuit. In the first of this two-part work, we have provided a theoretical back-bone for this model, providing guarantees for the uniqueness of the sparsest solution and for the success of pursuit algorithms by introducing the notion of stripe sparsity and other related measures. Herein, we extend the analysis to a noisy regime, thereby consid…
In this paper, we propose a new distributed coding structure with a soft input soft output (SISO) relay encoder for error-prone parallel relay channels. We refer to it as the distributed soft coding (DISC). In the proposed scheme, each relay first uses the received noisy signals to calculate the soft bit estimate (SBE) of the source symbols. A simple SISO encoder is developed to encode the SBEs of source symbols based on a constituent code generator matrix. The SISO encoder outputs at different relays are then forwarded to the destination and form a distributed codeword. The performance of the…
We consider the problem of transmission of several distributed sources over a multiple access channel (MAC) with side information at the sources and the decoder. Source-channel separation does not hold for this channel. Sufficient conditions are provided for transmission of sources with a given distortion. The source and/or the channel could have continuous alphabets (thus Gaussian sources and Gaussian MACs are special cases). Various previous results are obtained as special cases. We also provide several good joint source-channel coding schemes for a discrete/continuous source and discrete/co…
We consider a distributed source coding problem of $L$ correlated Gaussian observations $Y_i, i=1,2,...,L$. We assume that the random vector $Y^{L}={}^{\rm t} (Y_1,Y_2,$ $...,Y_L)$ is an observation of the Gaussian random vector $X^K={}^{\rm t}(X_1,X_2,...,X_K)$, having the form $Y^L=AX^K+N^L ,$ where $A$ is a $L\times K$ matrix and $N^L={}^{\rm t}(N_1,N_2,...,N_L)$ is a vector of $L$ independent Gaussian random variables also independent of $X^K$. The estimation error on $X^K$ is measured by the distortion covariance matrix. The rate distortion region is defined by a set of all rate vectors f…
The current BigData era routinely requires the processing of large scale data on massive distributed computing clusters. Such large scale clusters often suffer from the problem of "stragglers", which are defined as slow or failed nodes. The overall speed of a computational job on these clusters is typically dominated by stragglers in the absence of a sophisticated assignment of tasks to the worker nodes. In recent years, approaches based on coding theory (referred to as "coded computation") have been effectively used for straggler mitigation. Coded computation offers significant benefits for s…
We consider the problem of data collection in a two-layer network consisting of (1) links between $N$ distributed agents and a remote sink node; (2) a sparse network formed by these distributed agents. We study the effect of inter-agent communications on the overall energy consumption. Despite the sparse connections between agents, we provide an in-network coding scheme that reduces the overall energy consumption by a factor of $Θ(\log N)$ compared to a naive scheme which neglects inter-agent communications. By providing lower bounds on both the energy consumption and the sparseness (number of…
Differential distributed space-time coding (D-DSTC) has been considered to improve both diversity and data-rate in cooperative communications in the absence of channel information. However, conventionally, it is assumed that relays are perfectly synchronized in the symbol level. In practice, this assumption is easily violated due to the distributed nature of the relay networks. This paper proposes a new differential encoding and decoding process for D-DSTC systems with two relays. The proposed method is robust against synchronization errors and does not require any channel information at the d…
$2^m$-ary modulation creates $m$ bit channels which are neither independent nor identical, and this causes problems when applying polar coding because polar codes are designed for independent identical channels. Different from the existing multi-level coding (MLC) and bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM) schemes, this paper provides a convolutional polar coded modulation (CPCM) method that preserves the low-complexity nature of BICM while offering improved spectral efficiency. Numerical results are given to show the good performance of the proposed method.
An adaptive delay-tolerant distributed space-time coding (DSTC) scheme that exploits feedback is proposed for two-hop cooperative MIMO networks. Maximum likelihood (ML) receivers and adjustable code matrices are considered subject to a power constraint with a decode-and-forward (DF) cooperation strategy. In the proposed delay-tolerant DSTC scheme, an adjustable code matrix is employed to transform the space-time coded matrix at the relay nodes. Least-squares (LS) algorithms are developed with reduced computational complexity to adjust the parameters of the codes. Simulation results show that t…
This paper characterizes the optimal type-II error exponent for a distributed hypothesis testing-against-independence problem when the \emph{expected} rate of the sensor-detector link is constrained. Unlike for the well-known Ahlswede-Csiszar result that holds under a \emph{maximum} rate constraint and where a strong converse holds, here the optimal exponent depends on the allowed type-I error exponent. Specifically, if the type-I error probability is limited by $ε$, then the optimal type-II error exponent under an \emph{expected} rate constraint $R$ coincides with the optimal type-II error ex…
An adaptive randomized distributed space-time coding (DSTC) scheme and algorithms are proposed for two-hop cooperative MIMO networks. Linear minimum mean square error (MMSE) receivers and an amplify-and-forward (AF) cooperation strategy are considered. In the proposed DSTC scheme, a randomized matrix obtained by a feedback channel is employed to transform the space-time coded matrix at the relay node. Linear MMSE expressions are devised to compute the parameters of the adaptive randomized matrix and the linear receive filter. A stochastic gradient algorithm is also developed to compute the par…
In this paper, we propose an opportunistic network coding (ONC) scheme in cellular relay networks, which operates depending on whether the relay decodes source messages successfully or not. A fully distributed method is presented to implement the proposed opportunistic network coding scheme without the need of any feedback between two network nodes. We consider the use of proposed ONC for cellular downlink transmissions and derive its closed-form outage probability expression considering cochannel interference in a Rayleigh fading environment. Numerical results show that the proposed ONC schem…
We consider the problem of rate and power allocation for a sensor network under the pairwise distributed source coding constraint. For noiseless source-terminal channels, we show that the minimum sum rate assignment can be found by finding a minimum weight arborescence in an appropriately defined directed graph. For orthogonal noisy source-terminal channels, the minimum sum power allocation can be found by finding a minimum weight matching forest in a mixed graph. Numerical results are presented for both cases showing that our solutions always outperform previously proposed solutions. The gain…
In applications of distributed storage systems to distributed computing and implementation of key- value stores, the following property, usually referred to as consistency in computer science and engineering, is an important requirement: as the data stored changes, the latest version of the data must be accessible to a client that connects to the storage system. An information theoretic formulation called multi-version coding is introduced in the paper, in order to study storage costs of consistent distributed storage systems. Multi-version coding is characterized by ν totally ordered versions…