David A. Karpuk

Private Information Retrieval from Coded Databases with Colluding Servers

We present a general framework for Private Information Retrieval (PIR) from arbitrary coded databases, that allows one to adjust the rate of the scheme according to the suspected number of colluding servers. If the storage code is a generalized Reed-Solomon code of length n and dimension k, we design PIR schemes which simultaneously protect against t colluding servers and provide PIR rate 1-(k+t-1)/n, for all t between 1 and n-k. This interpolates between the previously studied cases of t=1 and k=1 and asymptotically achieves the known capacity bounds in both of these cases, as the size of the database grows.

Private information retrieval schemes for codec data with arbitrary collusion patterns

In Private Information Retrieval (PIR), one wants to download a file from a database without revealing to the database which file is being downloaded. Much attention has been paid to the case of the database being encoded across several servers, subsets of which can collude to attempt to deduce the requested file. With the goal of studying the achievable PIR rates in realistic scenarios, we generalize results for coded data from the case of all subsets of servers of size t colluding, to arbitrary subsets of the servers. We investigate the effectiveness of previous strategies in this new scenario, and present new results in the case where the servers are partitioned into disjoint colluding groups.

Space-time storage codes for wireless distributed storage systems

Distributed storage systems (DSSs) have gained a lot of interest recently, thanks to their robustness and scalability compared to single-device storage. Majority of the related research has exclusively concerned the network layer. At the same time, the number of users of, e.g., peer-to-peer (p2p) and device-to-device (d2d) networks as well as proximity based services is growing rapidly, and the mobility of users is considered more and more important. This motivates, in contrast to the existing literature, the study of the physical layer functionality of wireless distributed storage systems. In this paper, we take the first step towards protecting the storage repair transmissions from physical layer errors when the transmission takes place over a fading channel. To this end, we introduce the notion of a space-time storage code, drawing together the aspects of network layer and physical layer functionality and resulting in cross-layer robustness. It is also pointed out that existing space-time codes are too complex to be utilized in storage networks when the number of helpers involved is larger than the number of receive antennas at the newcomer or data collector, hence creating a call for less complex transmission protocols.

Locally Diverse Constellations From the Special Orthogonal Group

To optimize rotated multidimensional constellations over a single-input single-output Rayleigh fading channel, a family of rotation matrices is constructed for all dimensions which are a power of 2. This family is a one-parameter subgroup of the group of rotation matrices, and is located using a gradient descent scheme on this Lie group. The parameter defining the family is chosen to optimize the cutoff rate of the constellation. The optimal rotation parameter is computed explicitly for low signal-to-noise ratios. These rotations outperform full-diversity algebraic rotations in terms of cutoff rate at low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and bit error rate at high SNR in dimension n = 4. However, a quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) constellation rotated by such a matrix lacks full diversity, in contrast with the conventional wisdom that good signal sets exhibit full diversity. A new notion of diversity, referred to as local diversity, is introduced to attempt to account for this behavior. Roughly, a locally fully diverse constellation is fully diverse only in small neighborhoods. A local variant of the minimum product distance is also introduced and is shown experimentally to be a superior predictor of constellation performance than the minimum product distance in dimension n = 4.

A low-complexity message recovery method for Compute-and-Forward relaying

The Compute-and-Forward relaying strategy aims to achieve high computation rates by decoding linear combinations of transmitted messages at intermediate relays. However, if the involved relays independently choose which combinations of the messages to decode, there is no guarantee that the overall system of linear equations is solvable at the destination. In this article it is shown that, for a Gaussian fading channel model with two transmitters and two relays, always choosing the combination that maximizes the computation rate often leads to a case where the original messages cannot be recovered. It is further shown that by limiting the relays to select from carefully designed sets of equations, a solvable system can be guaranteed while maintaining high computation rates. The proposed method has a constant computational complexity and requires no information exchange between the relays.

Rotating non-uniform and high-dimensional constellations using geodesic flow on lie groups

We use a numerical algorithm on the Lie group of rotation matrices to obtain rotated constellations for Rayleigh fading channels. Our approach minimizes the union bound for the pairwise error probability to produce rotations optimized for a given signal-to-noise ratio. This approach circumvents explicit parametrization of rotation matrices, which has previously prevented robust numerical methods from being applied to constellation rotation. Our algorithm is applicable to arbitrary finite constellations in arbitrary dimensions, and one can thus apply our method to non-uniform constellations, which are of interest for practical concerns due to their ability to increase bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM) capacity. We show how our rotations can improve the codeword error performance of non-uniform constellations, and we also apply our method to reproduce and improve rotations given by ideal lattices in cyclotomic fields.

Information bounds and flatness factor approximation for fading wiretap MIMO channels

In this article, the design of secure lattice coset codes for general wireless channels with fading and Gaussian noise is studied. Recalling the eavesdroppers probability and information bounds, a variant of the latter is given from which it is explicitly seen that both quantities are upper bounded by (increasing functions of) the expected flatness factor of the faded lattice related to the eavesdropper. By making use of a recently developed approximation of the theta series of a lattice, it is further shown how the average flatness factor can be approximated numerically. In particular, based on the numerical computations, the average flatness factor not only bounds but also orders correctly the performance of different lattices.

Efficiently sphere-decodable physical layer transmission schemes for wireless storage networks

Three transmission schemes over a new type of multiple-access channel (MAC) model with inter-source communication links are proposed and investigated in this paper. This new channel model is well motivated by, e.g., wireless distributed storage networks, where communication to repair a lost node takes place from helper nodes to a repairing node over a wireless channel. Since in many wireless networks nodes can come and go in an arbitrary manner, there must be an inherent capability of inter-node communication between every pair of nodes.Assuming that communication is possible between every pair of helper nodes, the newly proposed schemes are based on various smart time-sharing and relaying strategies. In other words, certain helper nodes will be regarded as relays, thereby converting the conventional uncooperative multiple-access channel to a multiple-access relay channel (MARC). The diversity-multiplexing gain tradeoff (DMT) of the system together with efficient sphere-decodability and low structural complexity in terms of the number of antennas required at each end is used as the main design objectives. While the optimal DMT for the new channel model is fully open, it is shown that the proposed schemes outperform the DMT of the simple time-sharing protocol and, in some cases, even the optimal uncooperative MAC DMT.While using a wireless distributed storage network as a motivating example throughout the paper, the MAC transmission techniques proposed here are completely general and as such applicable to any MAC communication with inter-source communication links.

Multi-dimensional and non-uniform constellation optimization via the special orthogonal group

With the goal of optimizing the CM (coded modulation) capacity of a finite constellation over a Rayleigh fading channel, we use one-parameter subgroups of the Lie group of rotation matrices to construct families of rotation matrices which optimize a certain objective function controlling the CM capacity. Our construction does not depend on any assumptions about the constellation or signal-to-noise ratio. We confirm the benefits of our construction for uniform and non-uniform constellations at a large range of SNR values through numerous simulations. We show that in two and four dimensions one can obtain a further potential increase in CM capacity by jointly considering non-uniform and rotated constellations.

t-Private Information Retrieval Schemes Using Transitive Codes

Private information retrieval (PIR) schemes for coded storage with colluding servers are presented, 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. In the special case of no server collusion, this rate coincides with the known asymptotic PIR capacity for MDS-coded storage systems. While many PIR schemes in the literature require field sizes that grow with the number of servers and files in the system, we focus especially on the case of a binary base field, for which Reed–Muller codes serve as an important and explicit class of examples.