Alexander Vardy

Closest point search in lattices

In this semitutorial paper, a comprehensive survey of closest point search methods for lattices without a regular structure is presented. The existing search strategies are described in a unified framework, and differences between them are elucidated. An efficient closest point search algorithm, based on the Schnorr-Euchner (1995) variation of the Pohst (1981) method, is implemented. Given an arbitrary point x /spl isin/ /spl Ropf//sup m/ and a generator matrix for a lattice /spl Lambda/, the algorithm computes the point of /spl Lambda/ that is closest to x. The algorithm is shown to be substantially faster than other known methods, by means of a theoretical comparison with the Kannan (1983, 1987) algorithm and an experimental comparison with the Pohst (1981) algorithm and its variants, such as the Viterbo-Boutros (see ibid. vol.45, p.1639-42, 1999) decoder. Modifications of the algorithm are developed to solve a number of related search problems for lattices, such as finding a shortest vector, determining the kissing number, computing the Voronoi (1908)-relevant vectors, and finding a Korkine-Zolotareff (1873) reduced basis.

Algebraic soft-decision decoding of Reed-Solomon codes

A polynomial-time soft-decision decoding algorithm for Reed-Solomon codes is developed. This list-decoding algorithm is algebraic in nature and builds upon the interpolation procedure proposed by Guruswami and Sudan(see ibid., vol.45, p.1757-67, Sept. 1999) for hard-decision decoding. Algebraic soft-decision decoding is achieved by means of converting the probabilistic reliability information into a set of interpolation points, along with their multiplicities. The proposed conversion procedure is shown to be asymptotically optimal for a certain probabilistic model. The resulting soft-decoding algorithm significantly outperforms both the Guruswami-Sudan decoding and the generalized minimum distance (GMD) decoding of Reed-Solomon codes, while maintaining a complexity that is polynomial in the length of the code. Asymptotic analysis for alarge number of interpolation points is presented, leading to a geo- metric characterization of the decoding regions of the proposed algorithm. It is then shown that the asymptotic performance can be approached as closely as desired with a list size that does not depend on the length of the code.

How to Construct Polar Codes

A method for efficiently constructing polar codes is presented and analyzed. Although polar codes are explicitly defined, straightforward construction is intractable since the resulting polar bit-channels have an output alphabet that grows exponentially with the code length. Thus, the core problem that needs to be solved is that of faithfully approximating a bit-channel with an intractably large alphabet by another channel having a manageable alphabet size. We devise two approximation methods which “sandwich” the original bit-channel between a degraded and an upgraded version thereof. Both approximations can be efficiently computed and turn out to be extremely close in practice. We also provide theoretical analysis of our construction algorithms, proving that for any fixed ε > 0 and all sufficiently large code lengths n, polar codes whose rate is within ε of channel capacity can be constructed in time and space that are both linear in n.

List decoding of polar codes

We describe a successive-cancellation list decoder for polar codes, which is a generalization of the classic successive-cancellation decoder of Arikan. In the proposed list decoder, up to L decoding paths are considered concurrently at each decoding stage. Simulation results show that the resulting performance is very close to that of a maximum-likelihood decoder, even for moderate values of L. Thus it appears that the proposed list decoder bridges the gap between successive-cancellation and maximum-likelihood decoding of polar codes. The specific list-decoding algorithm that achieves this performance doubles the number of decoding paths at each decoding step, and then uses a pruning procedure to discard all but the L “best” paths. In order to implement this algorithm, we introduce a natural pruning criterion that can be easily evaluated. Nevertheless, straightforward implementation still requires O(L · n2) time, which is in stark contrast with the O(n log n) complexity of the original successive-cancellation decoder. We utilize the structure of polar codes to overcome this problem. Specifically, we devise an efficient, numerically stable, implementation taking only O(L · n log n) time and O(L · n) space.

Achieving the Secrecy Capacity of Wiretap Channels Using Polar Codes

Suppose that Alice wishes to send messages to Bob through a communication channel C1, but her transmissions also reach an eavesdropper Eve through another channel C2. This is the wiretap channel model introduced by Wyner in 1975. The goal is to design a coding scheme that makes it possible for Alice to communicate both reliably and securely. Reliability is measured in terms of Bobs probability of error in recovering the message, while security is measured in terms of the mutual information between the message and Eves observations. Wyner showed that the situation is characterized by a single constant Cs, called the secrecy capacity, which has the following meaning: for all ε >; 0, there exist coding schemes of rate R ≥ Cs-ε that asymptotically achieve the reliability and security objectives. However, his proof of this result is based upon a random-coding argument. To date, despite consider able research effort, the only case where we know how to construct coding schemes that achieve secrecy capacity is when Eves channel C2 is an erasure channel, or a combinatorial variation thereof. Polar codes were recently invented by Arikan; they approach the capacity of symmetric binary-input discrete memoryless channels with low encoding and decoding complexity. In this paper, we use polar codes to construct a coding scheme that achieves the secrecy capacity for a wide range of wiretap channels. Our construction works for any instantiation of the wiretap channel model, as long as both C1 and C2 are symmetric and binary-input, and C2 is degraded with respect to C1. Moreover, we show how to modify our construction in order to provide strong security, in the sense defined by Maurer, while still operating at a rate that approaches the secrecy capacity. In this case, we cannot guarantee that the reliability condition will also be satisfied unless the main channel C1 is noiseless, although we believe it can be always satisfied in practice.

The intractability of computing the minimum distance of a code

It is shown that the problem of computing the minimum distance of a binary linear code is NP-hard, and the corresponding decision problem is NP-complete. This result constitutes a proof of the conjecture of Berlekamp, McEliece, and van Tilborg (1978). Extensions and applications of this result to other problems in coding theory are discussed.

MDS array codes with independent parity symbols

A new family of maximum distance separable (MDS) array codes is presented. The code arrays contain p information columns and r independent parity columns, each column consisting of p-1 bits, where p is a prime. We extend a previously known construction for the case r=2 to three and more parity columns. It is shown that when r=3 such extension is possible for any prime p. For larger values of r, we give necessary and sufficient conditions for our codes to be MDS, and then prove that if p belongs to a certain class of primes these conditions are satisfied up to r/spl les/8. One of the advantages of the new codes is that encoding and decoding may be accomplished using simple cyclic shifts and XOR operations on the columns of the code array. We develop efficient decoding procedures for the case of two- and three-column errors. This again extends the previously known results for the case of a single-column error. Another primary advantage of our codes is related to the problem of efficient information updates. We present upper and lower bounds on the average number of parity bits which have to be updated in an MDS code over GF (2/sup m/), following an update in a single information bit. This average number is of importance in many storage applications which require frequent updates of information. We show that the upper bound obtained from our codes is close to the lower bound and, most importantly, does not depend on the size of the code symbols.

List Decoding of Polar Codes

We describe a successive-cancellation list decoder for polar codes, which is a generalization of the classic successive-cancellation decoder of Arıkan. In the proposed list decoder, L decoding paths are considered concurrently at each decoding stage, where L is an integer parameter. At the end of the decoding process, the most likely among the L paths is selected as the single codeword at the decoder output. Simulations show that the resulting performance is very close to that of maximum-likelihood decoding, even for moderate values of L. Alternatively, if a genie is allowed to pick the transmitted codeword from the list, the results are comparable with the performance of current state-of-the-art LDPC codes. We show that such a genie can be easily implemented using simple CRC precoding. The specific list-decoding algorithm that achieves this performance doubles the number of decoding paths for each information bit, and then uses a pruning procedure to discard all but the L most likely paths. However, straightforward implementation of this algorithm requires Ω(Ln2) time, which is in stark contrast with the O(n log n) complexity of the original successive-cancellation decoder. In this paper, we utilize the structure of polar codes along with certain algorithmic transformations in order to overcome this problem: we devise an efficient, numerically stable, implementation of the proposed list decoder that takes only O(Ln logn) time and O(Ln) space.

Correcting errors beyond the Guruswami-Sudan radius in polynomial time

We introduce a new family of error-correcting codes that have a polynomial-time encoder and a polynomial-time list-decoder, correcting a fraction of adversarial errors up to /spl tau//sub M/ = 1 - /sup M+1//spl radic/(M/sup M/R/sup M/) where R is the rate of the code and M /spl ges/ 1 is an arbitrary integer parameter. This makes it possible to decode beyond the Guruswami-Sudan radius of 1 /spl radic/R for all rates less than 1/16. Stated another way, for any /spl epsiv/ > 0, we can list-decode in polynomial time a fraction of errors up to 1 - /spl epsiv/ with a code of length n and rate /spl Omega/(/spl epsiv//log(1//spl epsiv/)), defined over an alphabet of size n/sup M/ = n/sup O(log(1//spl epsiv/))/. Notably, this error-correction is achieved in the worst-case against adversarial errors: a probabilistic model for the error distribution is neither needed nor assumed. The best results so far for polynomial-time list-decoding of adversarial errors required a rate of O(/spl epsiv//sup 2/) to achieve the correction radius of 1 - /spl epsiv/. Our codes and list-decoders are based on two key ideas. The first is the transition from bivariate polynomial interpolation, pioneered by Sudan and Guruswami-Sudan [1999], to multivariate interpolation decoding. The second idea is to part ways with Reed-Solomon codes, for which numerous prior attempts at breaking the O(/spl epsiv//sup 2/) rate barrier in the worst-case were unsuccessful. Rather than devising a better list-decoder for Reed-Solomon codes, we devise better codes. Standard Reed-Solomon encoders view a message as a polynomial f(X) over a field F/sub q/, and produce the corresponding codeword by evaluating f(X) at n distinct elements of F/sub q/. Herein, given f(X), we first compute one or more related polynomials g/sub 1/(X), g/sub 2/(X), ..., g/sub M-1/(X) and produce the corresponding codeword by evaluating all these polynomials. Correlation between f(X) and g/sub i/(X), carefully designed into our encoder, then provides the additional information we need to recover the encoded message from the output of the multivariate interpolation process.

On the stopping distance and the stopping redundancy of codes

It is now well known that the performance of a linear code Copf under iterative decoding on a binary erasure channel (and other channels) is determined by the size of the smallest stopping set in the Tanner graph for Copf. Several recent papers refer to this parameter as the stopping distance s of Copf. This is somewhat of a misnomer since the size of the smallest stopping set in the Tanner graph for Copf depends on the corresponding choice of a parity-check matrix. It is easy to see that s les d, where d is the minimum Hamming distance of Copf, and we show that it is always possible to choose a parity-check matrix for Copf (with sufficiently many dependent rows) such that s=d. We thus introduce a new parameter, the stopping redundancy of Copf, defined as the minimum number of rows in a parity- check matrix H for Copf such that the corresponding stopping distance s(H) attains its largest possible value, namely, s(H)=d. We then derive general bounds on the stopping redundancy of linear codes. We also examine several simple ways of constructing codes from other codes, and study the effect of these constructions on the stopping redundancy. Specifically, for the family of binary Reed-Muller codes (of all orders), we prove that their stopping redundancy is at most a constant times their conventional redundancy. We show that the stopping redundancies of the binary and ternary extended Golay codes are at most 34 and 22, respectively. Finally, we provide upper and lower bounds on the stopping redundancy of MDS codes