The basic two-terminal key generation model is considered, where the communication between the terminals is limited. We introduce a preorder relation on the set of joint distributions called XY-absolute continuity, and we reduce the multi-letter characterization of the key-communication tradeoff to the evaluation of the XY-concave envelope of a functional. For small communication rates, the key bits per interaction bit is expressed with a “symmetrical strong data processing constant”. Using hypercontractivity and Rényi divergence, we also prove a computationally friendly strong converse bound for the common randomness bits per interaction bit in terms of the supremum of the maximal correlation coefficient over a set of distributions, which is tight for binary symmetric sources. Regarding the other extreme case, a new characterization of the minimum interaction for achieving the maximum key rate (MIMK) is given, and is used to resolve a conjecture by Tyagi [1] about the MIMK for binary sources.
The basic two-terminal key generation model is considered, where the communication between the terminals is limited. We introduce a preorder relation on the set of joint distributions called XY-absolute continuity, and we reduce the multi-letter characterization of the key-communication tradeoff to the evaluation of the XY-concave envelope of a functional. For small communication rates, the key bits per interaction bit is expressed with a “symmetrical strong data processing constant”. Using hypercontractivity and Rényi divergence, we also prove a computationally friendly strong converse bound for the common randomness bits per interaction bit in terms of the supremum of the maximal correlation coefficient over a set of distributions, which is tight for binary symmetric sources. Regarding the other extreme case, a new characterization of the minimum interaction for achieving the maximum key rate (MIMK) is given, and is used to resolve a conjecture by Tyagi [1] about the MIMK for binary sources.
The basic two-terminal common randomness (CR) and key generation models are considered, where the communication between the terminals may be limited, and in particular may not be enough to achieve the maximum CR/key rate. We introduce general notions of XY-absolutely continuity and XY-concave function, and characterize the first order CR/key-communication tradeoff in terms of the evaluation of the XY-concave envelope of a functional defined on a set of distributions, which is simpler than the multi-letter characterization. Two extreme cases are given special attention. First, in the regime of very small communication rates, the CR bits per interaction bit (CRBIB) and key bits per interaction bit (KBIB) are expressed with a new symmetrical strong data processing constant, defined as the minimum of a parameter such that a certain information-theoretic functional touches its XY-concave envelope at a given source distribution. We also provide a computationally friendly strong converse bound for CRBIB and a similar (but not necessarily strong) one for KBIB in terms of the supremum of the maximal correlation coefficient over a set of distributions. The proof uses hypercontractivity and properties of the R\'enyi divergence. A criterion the tightness of the bound is given with applications to binary symmetric sources. Second, a new characterization of the minimum interaction rate needed for achieving the maximum key rate (MIMK) is given, and we resolve a conjecture by Tyagi and Narayan \cite{tyagi2013common} regarding the MIMK for binary sources. We also propose a new conjecture for binary symmetric sources.
A basic two-terminal secret key generation model is considered, where the interactive communication rate between the terminals may be limited, and in particular may not be enough to achieve the maximum key rate. We first prove a multi-letter characterization of the key-communication rate region (where the number of auxiliary random variables depends on the number of rounds of the communication), and then provide an equivalent but simpler characterization in terms of concave envelopes in the case of unlimited number of rounds. Two extreme cases are given special attention. First, in the regime of very low communication rates, the key bits per interaction bit (KBIB) is expressed with a new “symmetric strong data processing constant”, which has a concave envelope characterization analogous to that of the conventional strong data processing constant. The symmetric strong data processing constant can be upper bounded by the supremum of the maximal correlation coefficient over a set of distributions, which allows us to determine the KBIB for binary symmetric sources, and conclude, in particular, that the interactive scheme is not more efficient than the one-way scheme at least in the low communication-rate regime. Second, a new characterization of the minimum interaction rate needed for achieving the maximum key rate (MIMK) is given, and we resolve a conjecture by Tyagi regarding the MIMK for (possibly nonsymmetric) binary sources. We also propose a new conjecture for binary symmetric sources that the interactive scheme is not more efficient than the one-way scheme at any communication rate.
We study the generation of a secret key of maximum rate by a pair of terminals observing correlated sources and with the means to communicate over a noiseless public communication channel. Our main result establishes a structural equivalence between the generation of a maximum rate secret key and the generation of a common randomness that renders the observations of the two terminals conditionally independent. The minimum rate of such common randomness, termed interactive common information, is related to Wyner's notion of common information, and serves to characterize the minimum rate of interactive public communication required to generate an optimum rate secret key. This characterization yields a single-letter expression for the aforementioned communication rate when the number of rounds of interaction are bounded. An application of our results shows that interaction does not reduce this rate for binary symmetric sources. Further, we provide an example for which interaction does reduce the minimum rate of communication. Also, certain invariance properties of common information quantities are established that may be of independent interest.
In this work we study the problems of common randomness generation (CRG) and secret key generation (SKG). In the CRG problem, two parties, Alice and Bob, receive samples X and Y, respectively, from some joint source distribution μ. The two parties wish to agree on a key consisting of many bits of randomness, by exchanging messages that depend on each party’s respective input and the previous messages. The SKG problem is the same as CRG, except that an eavesdropper who observes the messages must not be able to determine much information about the key. We study the tradeoff between the minimum total length of all messages for a protocol generating a given number of bits of randomness and the minimum possible number of rounds in such a protocol. We construct a source distribution parametrized by positive integers r, n, and l, achieving such a tradeoff in a strong sense: when Alice and Bob can use r + 2 rounds of communication and l ≥ n, they can agree on l bits of entropy by communicating only O(log n) bits, but when they are restricted to r rounds of communication, they require communication of Ω(n^(1/2) / poly log(n)) bits to agree on l bits of entropy. We also prove an analogous result for the setting in which Alice and Bob can amortize, meaning that they receive N i.i.d. samples of (X, Y) from μ, and the communication and key length, respectively, are measured by the ratio of the actual number of bits communicated and the actual key length, respectively, to N.
A new model of multi-party secret key agreement is proposed, in which one terminal called the communicator can transmit public messages to other terminals before all terminals agree on a secret key. A single-letter characterization of the achievable region is derived in the stationary memoryless case. The new model generalizes some other (old and new) models of key agreement. In particular, key generation with an omniscient helper is the special case where the communicator knows all sources, for which we derive a zero-rate one-shot converse for the secret key per bit of communication.
Communication complexity refers to the minimum rate of public communication required for generating a maximal-rate secret key (SK) in the multiterminal source model of Csiszár and Narayan. Tyagi recently characterized this communication complexity for a two-terminal system. We extend the ideas in Tyagi's work to derive a lower bound on communication complexity in the general multiterminal setting. In the important special case of the complete graph pairwise independent network (PIN) model, our bound allows us to determine the exact linear communication complexity, i.e., the communication complexity when the communication and SK are restricted to be linear functions of the randomness available at the terminals.