Suhas N. Diggavi

Wireless Network Information Flow: A Deterministic Approach

In a wireless network with a single source and a single destination and an arbitrary number of relay nodes, what is the maximum rate of information flow achievable? We make progress on this long standing problem through a two-step approach. First, we propose a deterministic channel model which captures the key wireless properties of signal strength, broadcast and superposition. We obtain an exact characterization of the capacity of a network with nodes connected by such deterministic channels. This result is a natural generalization of the celebrated max-flow min-cut theorem for wired networks. Second, we use the insights obtained from the deterministic analysis to design a new quantize-map-and-forward scheme for Gaussian networks. In this scheme, each relay quantizes the received signal at the noise level and maps it to a random Gaussian codeword for forwarding, and the final destination decodes the sources message based on the received signal. We show that, in contrast to existing schemes, this scheme can achieve the cut-set upper bound to within a gap which is independent of the channel parameters. In the case of the relay channel with a single relay as well as the two-relay Gaussian diamond network, the gap is 1 bit/s/Hz. Moreover, the scheme is universal in the sense that the relays need no knowledge of the values of the channel parameters to (approximately) achieve the rate supportable by the network. We also present extensions of the results to multicast networks, half-duplex networks, and ergodic networks.

The worst additive noise under a covariance constraint

The maximum entropy noise under a lag p autocorrelation constraint is known by Burgs theorem to be the pth order Gauss-Markov process satisfying these constraints. The question is, what is the worst additive noise for a communication channel given these constraints? Is it the maximum entropy noise? The problem becomes one of extremizing the mutual information over all noise processes with covariances satisfying the correlation constraints R/sub 0/,..., R/sub p/. For high signal powers, the worst additive noise is Gauss-Markov of order p as expected. But for low powers, the worst additive noise is Gaussian with a covariance matrix in a convex set which depends on the signal power.

Secure Estimation and Control for Cyber-Physical Systems Under Adversarial Attacks

The vast majority of todays critical infrastructure is supported by numerous feedback control loops and an attack on these control loops can have disastrous consequences. This is a major concern since modern control systems are becoming large and decentralized and thus more vulnerable to attacks. This paper is concerned with the estimation and control of linear systems when some of the sensors or actuators are corrupted by an attacker. We give a new simple characterization of the maximum number of attacks that can be detected and corrected as a function of the pair (A,C) of the system and we show in particular that it is impossible to accurately reconstruct the state of a system if more than half the sensors are attacked. In addition, we show how the design of a secure local control loop can improve the resilience of the system. When the number of attacks is smaller than a threshold, we propose an efficient algorithm inspired from techniques in compressed sensing to estimate the state of the plant despite attacks. We give a theoretical characterization of the performance of this algorithm and we show on numerical simulations that the method is promising and allows to reconstruct the state accurately despite attacks. Finally, we consider the problem of designing output-feedback controllers that stabilize the system despite sensor attacks. We show that a principle of separation between estimation and control holds and that the design of resilient output feedback controllers can be reduced to the design of resilient state estimators.

Great expectations: the value of spatial diversity in wireless networks

The effect of spatial diversity on the throughput and reliability of wireless networks is examined. Spatial diversity is realized through multiple independently fading transmit/receive antenna paths in single-user communication and through independently fading links in multiuser communication. Adopting spatial diversity as a central theme, we start by studying its information-theoretic foundations, then we illustrate its benefits across the physical (signal transmission/coding and receiver signal processing) and networking (resource allocation, routing, and applications) layers. Throughout the paper, we discuss engineering intuition and tradeoffs, emphasizing the strong interactions between the various network functionalities.

A blind adaptive transmit antenna algorithm for wireless communication

A method is proposed for forming an adaptive phased array transmission beam pattern at a base station without any knowledge of array geometry, path angles or mobile feedback. Estimates of receive vector channels are used to form a transmit weight vector optimization problem. The authors provide closed form solutions for both the single user case and the multiple user case. They show through simulation of a multiple user cellular network that the cooperative transmission network algorithm is capable of improving network frequency re-use capacity by a factor of 5 to 8.

Differential space-time coding for frequency-selective channels

We introduce two space-time transmission schemes which allow full-rate and full-diversity noncoherent communications using two transmit antennas over fading frequency-selective channels. The first scheme operates in the frequency domain where it combines differential Alamouti (seeIEEE J. Select. Areas Commun., vol.16, p.1451-58, Nov. 1998) space-time block-coding (STBC) with OFDM. The second scheme operates in the time domain and employs differential time-reversal STBC to guarantee blind channel identifiability without the need for temporal oversampling or multiple receive antennas.

Approximate capacity of Gaussian relay networks

We present an achievable rate for general Gaussian relay networks. We show that the achievable rate is within a constant number of bits from the information-theoretic cut-set upper bound on the capacity of these networks. This constant depends on the topology of the network, but not the values of the channel gains. Therefore, we uniformly characterize the capacity of Gaussian relay networks within a constant number of bits, for all channel parameters.

Characterization of fast fading vector channels for multi-antenna communication systems

In a wireless communication environment, multipath propagation and mobile user motion result in a dispersive time-varying communication channel. In order to analyze the performance of wireless communication systems, it is necessary to define models which reasonably approximate the time varying impulse response of the radio channel. Many widely accepted scalar channel (single antenna) statistical models have been reported. In order to analyze performance for real time adaptive antenna array techniques, it is necessary to extend existing scalar channel statistical models to the vector channel (multiple antenna) case. The paper develops a statistical, time varying, dispersive, wireless vector channel model which is based on the physical propagation environment. The model is shown to be consistent with the known characteristics of the wireless communication channel. Antenna pattern interference rejection as a function of update rate is presented as an application example for the vector channel model.<<ETX>>

Hierarchical Coded Caching

caching of popular content during off-peak hours is a strategy to reduce network loads during peak hours. Recent work has shown significant benefits of designing such caching strategies not only to locally deliver the part of the content, but also to provide coded multicasting opportunities even among users with different demands. Exploiting both of these gains was shown to be approximately optimal for caching systems with a single layer of caches. Motivated by practical scenarios, we consider, in this paper, a hierarchical content delivery network with two layers of caches. We propose a new caching scheme that combines two basic approaches. The first approach provides coded multicasting opportunities within each layer; the second approach provides coded multicasting opportunities across multiple layers. By striking the right balance between these two approaches, we show that the proposed scheme achieves the optimal communication rates to within a constant multiplicative and additive gap. We further show that there is no tension between the rates in each of the two layers up to the aforementioned gap. Thus, both the layers can simultaneously operate at approximately the minimum rate.

Transmission techniques for relay-interference networks

In this paper we study the relay-interference wireless network, in which relay (helper) nodes are to facilitate competing information flows over a wireless network. We examine this in the context of a deterministic wireless interaction model, which eliminates the channel noise and focuses on the signal interactions. Using this model, we show that almost all the known schemes such as interference suppression, interference alignment and interference separation are necessary for relay-interference networks. In addition, we discover a new interference management technique, which we call interference neutralization, which allows for over-the-air interference removal, without the transmitters having complete access the interfering signals. We show that interference separation, suppression, and neutralization arise in a fundamental manner, since we show complete characterizations for special configurations of the relay-interference network.