The capacity of private information retrieval (PIR) from databases coded using maximum distance separable (MDS) codes has been previously characterized by Banawan and Ulukus, where it was assumed that the messages are encoded and stored separably into the databases. This assumption was also usually taken in other related works in the literature, and this capacity is usually referred to as the MDS-PIR capacity colloquially. In this work, we considered the question if and when this capacity barrier can be broken through joint encoding and storing of the messages. Our main results are two classes of novel code constructions which allow joint encoding as well as the corresponding PIR protocols, which indeed outperform the separate MDS-coded systems. Moreover, we show that a simple but novel expansion technique allows us to generalize these two classes of codes, resulting in a wider range of the cases where this capacity barrier can be broken.
We propose a private information retrieval (PIR) protocol for distributed storage systems with noncolluding nodes where data is stored using an arbitrary linear code. An expression for the PIR rate, i.e., the ratio of the amount of retrieved data per unit of downloaded data, is derived, and a necessary and a sufficient condition for codes to achieve the maximum distance separable (MDS) PIR capacity are given. The necessary condition is based on the generalized Hamming weights of the storage code, while the sufficient condition is based on code automorphisms. We show that cyclic codes and Reed-…
We consider private information retrieval (PIR) for distributed storage systems (DSSs) with noncolluding nodes where data is stored using a non maximum distance separable (MDS) linear code. It was recently shown that if data is stored using a particular class of non-MDS linear codes, the MDS-PIR capacity, i.e., the maximum possible PIR rate for MDS-coded DSSs, can be achieved. For this class of codes, we prove that the PIR capacity is indeed equal to the MDS-PIR capacity, giving the first family of non-MDS codes for which the PIR capacity is known. For other codes, we provide asymmetric PIR pr…
We consider private information retrieval (PIR) for distributed storage systems (DSSs) with noncolluding nodes where data is stored using a non maximum distance separable (MDS) linear code. It was recently shown that if data is stored using a particular class of non-MDS linear codes, the MDS-PIR capacity, i.e., the maximum possible PIR rate for MDS-coded DSSs, can be achieved. For this class of codes, we prove that the PIR capacity is indeed equal to the MDS-PIR capacity, giving the first family of non-MDS codes for which the PIR capacity is known. For other codes, we provide asymmetric PIR pr…
Private information retrieval (PIR) is the problem of privately retrieving one out of $M$ original files from $N$ severs, i.e., each individual server learns nothing about the file that the user is requesting. Usually, the $M$ files are replicated or encoded by a maximum distance separable (MDS) code and then stored across the $N$ servers. Compared to mere replication, MDS coded servers can significantly reduce the storage overhead. Particularly, PIR from minimum storage regenerating (MSR) coded servers can simultaneously reduce the repair bandwidth when repairing failed servers. Existing PIR …
Private information retrieval (PIR) gets renewed attentions due to its information-theoretic reformulation and its application in distributed storage system (DSS). The general PIR model considers a coded database containing $N$ servers storing $M$ files. Each file is stored independently via the same arbitrary $(N,K)$-MDS code. A user wants to retrieve a specific file from the database privately against an arbitrary set of $T$ colluding servers. A key problem is to analyze the PIR capacity, defined as the maximal number of bits privately retrieved per one downloaded bit. Several extensions for…
We prove that a class of distance-optimal local reconstruction codes (LRCs), an important family of repair-efficient codes for distributed storage systems, achieve the maximum distance separable private information retrieval capacity for the case of noncolluding nodes. This particular class of codes includes Pyramid codes and other LRCs proposed in the literature.
Consider the problem of private information retrieval (PIR) over a distributed storage system where $M$ records are stored across $N$ servers by using an $[N,K]$ MDS code. For simplicity, this problem is usually referred as the coded PIR problem. In 2016, Banawan and Ulukus designed the first capacity-achieving coded PIR scheme with sub-packetization $KN^{M}$ and access number $MKN^{M}$, where capacity characterizes the minimal download size for retrieving per unit of data, and sub-packetization and access number are two metrics closely related to implementation complexity. In this paper, we f…
Suppose a database containing $M$ records is replicated in each of $N$ servers, and a user wants to privately retrieve one record by accessing the servers such that identity of the retrieved record is secret against any up to $T$ servers. A scheme designed for this purpose is called a $T$-private information retrieval ($T$-PIR) scheme. In this paper we focus on the field size of $T$-PIR schemes. We design a generalcapacity-achieving $T$-PIR scheme whose queries are generated by using some {\rm MDS } array codes. It only requires field size $q\geq\sqrt[\ell]{N}$, where $\ell=\min\{t^{M-2},(n-t)…
Private Information Retrieval from Joint Systematic MDS-Coded with Non-Colluding Servers: Bounds and Constructions
School of Information Science and Engineering, Shandong Agricultural University（山东农业大学信息科学与工程学院）；State Key Laboratory of Cryptography and Digital Economy Security, Shandong University（山东大学密码与数字经济安全国家重点实验室）；Key Laboratory of Cryptologic Technology and Information Security, Ministry of Education, Shandong University（山东大学教育部密码技术与信息安全重点实验室）；School of Cyber Science and Technology, Shandong University（山东大学网络空间安全学院）
In this work, a flexible and robust private information retrieval (PIR) scheme based on binary non-maximum distance separable (non-MDS) codes is considered. This combines previous works on PIR schemes based on transitive non-MDS codes on one hand, and PIR from MDS-coded Byzantine and non-responsive servers on the other hand. More specifically, a PIR scheme employing binary Reed-Muller (RM) codes tolerant to colluding, Byzantine, and non-responsive servers is constructed, and bounds for the achievable rates are derived under certain conditions. The construction of such schemes turns out to be m…
We propose three private information retrieval (PIR) protocols for distributed storage systems (DSSs) where data is stored using an arbitrary linear code. The first two protocols, named Protocol 1 and Protocol 2, achieve privacy for the scenario with noncolluding nodes. Protocol 1 requires a file size that is exponential in the number of files in the system, while Protocol 2 requires a file size that is independent of the number of files and is hence simpler. We prove that, for certain linear codes, Protocol 1 achieves the maximum distance separable (MDS) PIR capacity, i.e., the maximum PIR ra…
The problem of providing privacy, in the private information retrieval (PIR) sense, to users requesting data from a distributed storage system (DSS), is considered. The DSS is coded by an $(n,k,d)$ Maximum Distance Separable (MDS) code to store the data reliably on unreliable storage nodes. Some of these nodes can be spies which report to a third party, such as an oppressive regime, which data is being requested by the user. An information theoretic PIR scheme ensures that a user can satisfy its request while revealing, to the spy nodes, no information on which data is being requested. A user …
This paper presents private information retrieval (PIR) schemes for coded storage with colluding servers, which are not restricted to maximum distance separable (MDS) codes. PIR schemes for general linear codes are constructed and the resulting PIR rate is calculated explicitly. It is shown that codes with transitive automorphism groups yield the highest possible rates obtainable with the proposed scheme. This rate coincides with the known asymptotic PIR capacity for MDS-coded storage systems without collusion. While many PIR schemes in the literature require field sizes that grow with the num…
The problem of private information retrieval gets renewed attentions in recent years due to its information-theoretic reformulation and applications in distributed storage systems. PIR capacity is the maximal number of bits privately retrieved per one bit of downloaded bit. The capacity has been fully solved for some degenerating cases. For a general case where the database is both coded and colluded, the exact capacity remains unknown. We build a general private information retrieval scheme for MDS coded databases with colluding servers. Our scheme achieves the rate $(1+R+R^2+\cdots+R^{M-1})$…
We consider the problem of Private Information Retrieval with Private Side Information (PIR-PSI), wherein a user wants to retrieve a file from replication based non-colluding databases by using the prior knowledge of a subset of the files stored on the databases. The PIR-PSI framework ensures that the privacy of the demand and the side information are jointly preserved, thereby finding potential applications when multiple files have to be downloaded spread across different time-instants. Although the capacity of the PIR-PSI setting is known, we observe that the underlying capacity achieving co…
We study private information retrieval (PIR) on coded data with possibly colluding servers. Devising PIR schemes with optimal download rate in the case of collusion and coded data is still open in general. We provide a lifting operation that can transform what we call one-shot PIR schemes for two messages into schemes for any number of messages. We apply this lifting operation on existing PIR schemes and describe two immediate implications. First, we obtain novel PIR schemes with improved download rate in the case of MDS coded data and server collusion. Second, we provide a simplified descript…
MDS codes are elegant constructions in coding theory and have mode important applications in cryptography, network coding, distributed data storage, communication systems et. In this study, a method is given which MDS codes are lifted to a higher finite field. The presented method satisfies the protection of the distance and creating the MDS code over the $F_q$ by using MDS code over $F_p.$
In this paper, we present a new perspective of single server private information retrieval (PIR) schemes by using the notion of linear error-correcting codes. Many of the known single server schemes are based on taking linear combinations between database elements and the query elements. Using the theory of linear codes, we develop a generic framework that formalizes all such PIR schemes. Further, we describe some known PIR schemes with respect to this code-based framework, and present the weaknesses of the broken PIR schemes in a generic point of view.
Due to dependence between codeword elements, index modulation (IM) and related modulation techniques struggle to provide simple solutions for practical problems such as Gray coding between information bits and constellation points; and low-complexity log-likelihood ratio (LLR) calculations for channel-encoded information bits. In this paper, we show that a modulation technique based on a simple maximum distance separable (MDS) code, in other words, MDS modulation, can provide simple yet effective solutions to these problems, rendering the MDS techniques more beneficial in the presence of codin…
In quantum private information retrieval (QPIR), a user retrieves a classical file from multiple servers by downloading quantum systems without revealing the identity of the file. The QPIR capacity is the maximal achievable ratio of the retrieved file size to the total download size. In this paper, the capacity of QPIR from MDS-coded and colluding servers is studied for the first time. Two general classes of QPIR, called stabilizer QPIR and dimension-squared QPIR induced from classical strongly linear PIR are defined, and the related QPIR capacities are derived. For the non-colluding case, the…
Private Information Retrieval (PIR) was first proposed by B. Chor, O. Goldreich, E. Kushilevitz and M. Sudan in their 1995 FOCS paper. For MDS coded distributed storage system private information retrieval was proposed and the capacity of PIR schemes for MDS coded distributed storage was studied. Star product PIR schemes from general coded distributed storage system with colluding servers were constructed over general finite fields. These star product schemes has no restriction on the sizes of fields and can be constructed for coded distributed storage across large number of servers. In this p…
The hull of linear codes have promising utilization in coding theory and quantum coding theory. In this paper, we study the hull of generalized Reed-Solomon codes and extended generalized Reed-Solomon codes over finite fields with respect to the Euclidean inner product. Several infinite families of MDS codes with arbitrary dimensional hull are presented. As an application, using these MDS codes with arbitrary dimensional hull, we construct several new infinite families of entanglement-assisted quantum error-correcting codes with flexible parameters.
We consider the problem of private information retrieval (PIR) from multiple storage nodes when the underlying database is encoded using regenerating codes, i.e., the database has the ability to recover from individual node failures. We seek optimality in terms of download rates when a user wants to retrieve a message privately (in an information-theoretic sense) from the database. We focus mostly on the more extensively explored Minimum Storage Regenerating (MSR) codes and formally state and prove the PIR capacity of such codes. We also give a simple scheme to achieve this capacity which is b…
Private information retrieval (PIR) protocols allow a user to retrieve a data item from a database without revealing any information about the identity of the item being retrieved. Specifically, in information-theoretic $k$-server PIR, the database is replicated among $k$ non-communicating servers, and each server learns nothing about the item retrieved by the user. The cost of PIR protocols is usually measured in terms of their communication complexity, which is the total number of bits exchanged between the user and the servers, and storage overhead, which is the ratio between the total numb…
We consider the storage-retrieval rate tradeoff in private information retrieval (PIR) systems using a Shannon-theoretic approach. Our focus is mostly on the canonical two-message two-database case, for which a coding scheme based on random codebook generation and the binning technique is proposed. This coding scheme reveals a hidden connection between PIR and the classic multiple description source coding problem. We first show that when the retrieval rate is kept optimal, the proposed non-linear scheme can achieve better performance over any linear scheme. Moreover, a non-trivial storage-ret…
In this work, two practical concepts related to private information retrieval (PIR) are introduced and coined full support-rank PIR and strongly linear PIR. Being of full support-rank is a technical, yet natural condition required to prove a converse result for a capacity expression and satisfied by almost all currently known capacity-achieving schemes, while strong linearity is a practical requirement enabling implementation over small finite fields with low subpacketization degree. Then, the capacity of MDS-coded, linear, full support-rank PIR in the presence of colluding servers is derived,…
Gradient coding is a technique for straggler mitigation in distributed learning. In this paper we design novel gradient codes using tools from classical coding theory, namely, cyclic MDS codes, which compare favorably with existing solutions, both in the applicable range of parameters and in the complexity of the involved algorithms. Second, we introduce an approximate variant of the gradient coding problem, in which we settle for approximate gradient computation instead of the exact one. This approach enables graceful degradation, i.e., the $\ell_2$ error of the approximate gradient is a decr…
A private information retrieval (PIR) scheme allows a user to retrieve a file from a database without revealing any information on the file being requested. As of now, PIR schemes have been proposed for several kinds of storage systems, including replicated and MDS-coded data. In this paper, the problem of constructing a PIR scheme on regenerating codes is considered. A regenerating code is a storage code whose codewords are distributed among $n$ nodes, enabling efficient storage of files, as well as low-bandwidth retrieval of files and repair of nodes. In this work, a PIR scheme on regenerati…
We introduce a definition for \emph{Families of Optimal Binary Non-MDS Erasure Codes} for $[n, k]$ codes over $GF(2)$, and propose an algorithm for finding those families by using hill climbing techniques over Balanced XOR codes. Due to the hill climbing search, those families of codes have always better decoding probability than the codes generated in a typical Random Linear Network Coding scenario, i.e., random linear codes. We also show a surprising result that for small values of $k$, the decoding probability of our codes in $GF(2)$ is very close to the decoding probability of the codes ob…
MDS codes and self-dual codes are important families of classical codes in coding theory. It is of interest to investigate MDS self-dual codes. The existence of MDS self-dual codes over finite field $F_q$ is completely solved for $q$ is even. In this paper, for finite field with odd characteristic, we construct some new classes of MDS self-dual codes by (extended) generalized Reed-Solomon codes.
An erasure channel with a fixed alphabet size $q$, where $q \gg 1$, is studied. It is proved that over any erasure channel (with or without memory), Maximum Distance Separable (MDS) codes achieve the minimum probability of error (assuming maximum likelihood decoding). Assuming a memoryless erasure channel, the error exponent of MDS codes are compared with that of random codes and linear random codes. It is shown that the envelopes of all these exponents are identical for rates above the critical rate. Noting the optimality of MDS codes, it is concluded that both random codes and linear random …
Self-dual maximum distance separable codes (self-dual MDS codes) and self-dual near MDS codes are very important in coding theory and practice. Thus, it is interesting to construct self-dual MDS or self-dual near MDS codes. In this paper, we not only give check matrices of dual codes of twisted generalized Reed-Solomon codes (TGRS codes) but also present the efficient and necessary condition of self-dual TGRS codes. Moreover, we construct several classes of self-dual MDS or self-dual near MDS codes from TGRS codes.
MDS self-dual codes over finite fields have attracted a lot of attention in recent years by their theoretical interests in coding theory and applications in cryptography and combinatorics. In this paper we present a series of MDS self-dual codes with new length by using generalized Reed-Solomon codes and extended generalized Reed-Solomon codes as the candidates of MDS codes and taking their evaluation sets as an union of cyclotomic classes. The conditions on such MDS codes being self-dual are expressed in terms of cyclotomic numbers.
MDS self-dual codes have nice algebraic structures and are uniquely determined by lengths. Recently, the construction of MDS self-dual codes of new lengths has become an important and hot issue in coding theory. In this paper, we develop the existing theory and construct six new classes of MDS self-dual codes. Together with our constructions, the proportion of all known MDS self-dual codes relative to possible MDS self-dual codes generally exceed 57\%. As far as we know, this is the largest known ratio. Moreover, some new families of MDS self-orthogonal codes and MDS almost self-dual codes are…
We consider constructing capacity-achieving linear codes with minimum message size for private information retrieval (PIR) from $N$ non-colluding databases, where each message is coded using maximum distance separable (MDS) codes, such that it can be recovered from accessing the contents of any $T$ databases. It is shown that the minimum message size (sometimes also referred to as the sub-packetization factor) is significantly, in fact exponentially, lower than previously believed. More precisely, when $K>T/\textbf{gcd}(N,T)$ where $K$ is the total number of messages in the system and $\textbf…
In this survey, two related families of codes are discussed: batch codes and codes for private information retrieval. These two families can be viewed as natural generalizations of locally repairable codes, which were extensively studied in the context of coding for fault tolerance in distributed data storage systems. Bounds on the parameters of the codes, as well as basic constructions, are presented. Connections between different code families are discussed.
There has been much recent interest in Private information Retrieval (PIR) in models where a database is stored across several servers using coding techniques from distributed storage, rather than being simply replicated. In particular, a recent breakthrough result of Fazelli, Vardy and Yaakobi introduces the notion of a PIR code and a PIR array code, and uses this notion to produce efficient protocols. In this paper we are interested in designing PIR array codes. We consider the case when we have $m$ servers, with each server storing a fraction $(1/\omegaR)$ of the bits of the database; here …
In a distributed storage system based on erasure coding, an important problem is the \emph{repair problem}: If a node storing a coded piece fails, in order to maintain the same level of reliability, we need to create a new encoded piece and store it at a new node. This paper presents a construction of systematic $(n,k)$-MDS codes for $2k\le n$ that achieves the minimum repair bandwidth when repairing from $k+1$ nodes.
We consider a simple multiple access network (SMAN), where $k$ sources of unit rates transmit their data to a common sink via $n$ relays. Each relay is connected to the sink and to certain sources. A coding scheme (for the relays) is weakly secure if a passive adversary who eavesdrops on less than $k$ relay-sink links cannot reconstruct the data from each source. We show that there exists a weakly secure maximum distance separable (MDS) coding scheme for the relays if and only if every subset of $\ell$ relays must be collectively connected to at least $\ell+1$ sources, for all $0 < \ell < k$. …
We study two problems of private matrix multiplication, over a distributed computing system consisting of a master node, and multiple servers that collectively store a family of public matrices using Maximum-Distance-Separable (MDS) codes. In the first problem of Private and Secure Matrix Multiplication (PSMM) from colluding servers, the master intends to compute the product of its confidential matrix $\mathbf{A}$ with a target matrix stored on the servers, without revealing any information about $\mathbf{A}$ and the index of target matrix to some colluding servers. In the second problem of Fu…
Private information retrieval has been reformulated in an information-theoretic perspective in recent years. The two most important parameters considered for a PIR scheme in a distributed storage system are the storage overhead and PIR rate. The complexity of the computations done by the servers for the various tasks of the distributed storage system is an important parameter in such systems which didn't get enough attention in PIR schemes. As a consequence, we take into consideration a third parameter, the access complexity of a PIR scheme, which characterizes the total amount of data to be a…
In a distributed storage system, private information retrieval (PIR) guarantees that a user retrieves one file from the system without revealing any information about the identity of its interested file to any individual server. In this paper, we investigate $(N,K,M)$ coded sever model of PIR, where each of $M$ files is distributed to the $N$ servers in the form of $(N,K)$ maximum distance separable (MDS) code for some $N>K$ and $M>1$. As a result, we propose a new capacity-achieving $(N,K,M)$ coded linear PIR scheme such that it can be implemented with file length $\frac{K(N-K)}{\gcd(N,K)}$, …
In the classical private information retrieval (PIR) setup, a user wants to retrieve a file from a database or a distributed storage system (DSS) without revealing the file identity to the servers holding the data. In the quantum PIR (QPIR) setting, a user privately retrieves a classical file by receiving quantum information from the servers. The QPIR problem has been treated by Song \emph{et al.} in the case of replicated servers, both without collusion and with all but one servers colluding. In this paper, the QPIR setting is extended to account for maximum distance separable (MDS) coded ser…
In this paper, we shed light on how an adaptive, efficient error coding in the transport layer helps ensure the application requirements. We recap the use of MDS codes and show that binary coding can significantly reduce the complexity and hence increase the applicability also for embedded devices. We exploit the persymmetric structure of the generator matrix in polar codes to establish a duality of dispersion over channels (the polarization effect) and over packets (the generality required for multicast transmission), thereby constructing systematic polar codes for incremental redundancy whos…
A $(K, N, T, K_c)$ instance of the MDS-TPIR problem is comprised of $K$ messages and $N$ distributed servers. Each message is separately encoded through a $(K_c, N)$ MDS storage code. A user wishes to retrieve one message, as efficiently as possible, while revealing no information about the desired message index to any colluding set of up to $T$ servers. The fundamental limit on the efficiency of retrieval, i.e., the capacity of MDS-TPIR is known only at the extremes where either $T$ or $K_c$ belongs to $\{1,N\}$. The focus of this work is a recent conjecture by Freij-Hollanti, Gnilke, Hollant…
The symbol-pair code is a new coding framework proposed to guard against pair-errors in symbol-pair read channels. Especially, a symbol-pair code with the parameters achieving the Singleton-type bound is called an MDS symbol-pair code. In this paper, inspiring by the classical construction for Reed-Solomon codes, for any $3\le k<m\le q-2$ and $m_1=\Big\lfloor{\tiny\frac{m}{\lfloor\frac{k-1}{2}\rfloor}}\Big\rfloor$, we construct a class of $q$-ary MDS symbol-pair codes with dimension $k$ and length $n$ $(n=m+m_1, m+m_1-1)$, where $q$ is a prime power. Furthermore, for $k\in\{3,4\}$, the symbol-…
The hull of linear codes plays an important role in quantum information and coding theory. In the present paper, by investigating the Galois hulls of generalized Reed-Solomon (GRS) codes and extended GRS codes over the finite field Fq, we give several new families of MDS codes with Galois hulls of arbitrary dimensions that are not obtained before. Some of them generalize the ones in the literature [13]. As a consequence, using these MDS codes with Galois hulls of arbitrary dimensions, we construct nine new families of MDS entanglement-assisted quantum error-correcting codes (EAQECCs) with flex…
Linear codes with complementary duals (LCD) have a great deal of significance amongst linear codes. Maximum distance separable (MDS) codes are also an important class of linear codes since they achieve the greatest error correcting and detecting capabilities for fixed length and dimension. The construction of linear codes that are both LCD and MDS is a hard task in coding theory. In this paper, we study the constructions of LCD codes that are MDS from negacyclic codes over finite fields of odd prime power $q$ elements. We construct four families of MDS negacyclic LCD codes of length $n|\frac{q…
There has been much recent interest in Private information Retrieval (PIR) in models where a database is stored across several servers using coding techniques from distributed storage, rather than being simply replicated. In particular, a recent breakthrough result of Fazelli, Vardy and Yaakobi introduces the notion of a PIR code and a PIR array code, and uses this notion to produce efficient PIR protocols. In this paper we are interested in designing PIR array codes. We consider the case when we have $m$ servers, with each server storing a fraction $(1/s)$ of the bits of the database; here $s…
