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IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT)

Algorithmic aspects of optimal channel coding

Siddharth Barman, Omar Fawzi

Published Jul 1, 2016• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A central question in information theory is to determine the maximum success probability that can be achieved in sending a fixed number of messages over a noisy channel. This was first studied in the pioneering work of Shannon who established a simple expression characterizing this quantity in the limit of multiple independent uses of the channel. Here, we consider the general setting with only one use of the channel. We observe that the maximum success probability can be expressed as the maximum value of a submodular function. Using this connection, we establish the following results: 1) There is a simple greedy polynomial-time algorithm that computes a code achieving a (1 - e-1)-approximation of the maximum success probability. Moreover, for this problem it is NP-hard to obtain an approximation ratio strictly better than (1 - e-1). 2) Shared quantum entanglement between the sender and the receiver can increase the success probability by a factor of at most 1/1-e-1. In addition, this factor is tight if one allows an arbitrary non-signaling box between the sender and the receiver. 3) We give tight bounds on the one-shot performance of the meta-converse of Polyanskiy-Poor-Verdú.

DOI
10.1109/isit.2016.7541430

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A central question in information theory is to determine the maximum success probability that can be achieved in sending a fixed number of messages over a noisy channel. This was first studied in the pioneering work of Shannon who established a simple expression characterizing this quantity in the limit of multiple independent uses of the channel. Here, we consider the general setting with only one use of the channel. We observe that the maximum success probability can be expressed as the maximum value of a submodular function. Using this connection, we establish the following results: 1) There is a simple greedy polynomial-time algorithm that computes a code achieving a (1 - e-1)-approximation of the maximum success probability. Moreover, for this problem it is NP-hard to obtain an approximation ratio strictly better than (1 - e-1). 2) Shared quantum entanglement between the sender and the receiver can increase the success probability by a factor of at most 1/1-e-1. In addition, this factor is tight if one allows an arbitrary non-signaling box between the sender and the receiver. 3) We give tight bounds on the one-shot performance of the meta-converse of Polyanskiy-Poor-Verdú.
A central question in information theory is to determine the maximum success probability that can be achieved in sending a fixed number of messages over a noisy channel. This was first studied in the pioneering work of Shannon, who established a simple expression characterizing this quantity in the limit of multiple independent uses of the channel. Here, we consider the general setting with only one use of the channel. We observe that the maximum success probability can be expressed as the maximum value of a submodular function. Using this connection, we establish the following results: 1) There is a simple greedy polynomial-time algorithm that computes a code achieving a (1 - e-1)-approximation of the maximum success probability. The factor (1-e-1) can be improved arbitrarily close to 1 at the cost of slightly reducing the number of messages to be sent. Moreover, it is NP-hard to obtain an approximation ratio strictly better than (1 - e-1) for the problem of computing the maximum success probability. 2) Shared quantum entanglement between the sender and the receiver can increase the success probability by a factor of at most (1/(1 - e-1)). In addition, this factor is tight if one allows an arbitrary non-signaling box between the sender and the receiver. 3) We give tight bounds on the one-shot performance of the meta-converse of Polyanskiy-Poor-Verdú.
We study the problem of finding the optimal code of size k for a given classical-quantum channel, with input space X and output space of dimension d, from an algorithmic point of view. We show that unlike the classical case, the relevant function is not submodular, and does not have the diminishing returns property. We also study a semidefinite programming relaxation, which corresponds to the setting where the sender and receiver have a non-signalling box, and show that it can be rounded in two different ways. If the SDP gives a value of p for the success probability, then a simple rounding strategy returns a code of size k with success probability at least p/O(log IXI log d). The second rounding method is p based on the pretty good measurement and returns a code with success probability close to p, but the code is smaller: it has size k · Ω(p2).
We study the effects of quantum entanglement on the performance of two classical zero-error communication tasks among multiple parties. Both tasks are generalizations of the two-party zero-error channel-coding problem, where a sender and a receiver want to perfectly communicate messages through a one-way classical noisy channel. If the two parties are allowed to share entanglement, there are several positive results that show the existence of channels for which they can communicate strictly more than what they could do with classical resources. In the first task, one sender wants to communicate a common message to multiple receivers. We show that if the number of receivers is greater than a certain threshold then entanglement does not allow for an improvement in the communication for any finite number of uses of the channel. On the other hand, when the number of receivers is fixed, we exhibit a class of channels for which entanglement gives an advantage. The second problem we consider features multiple collaborating senders and one receiver. Classically, cooperation among the senders might allow them to communicate on average more messages than the sum of their individual possibilities. We show that whenever a channel allows single-sender entanglement-assisted advantage, then the gain extends also to the multisender case. Furthermore, we show that entanglement allows for a peculiar amplification of information which cannot happen classically, for a fixed number of uses of the channels.
We study relaxations of entanglement-assisted quantum channel coding and establish that non-signaling assistance and a natural semi-definite programming relaxation\, -- \,termed meta-converse\, -- \,are equivalent in terms of success probabilities. We then present a rounding procedure that transforms any non-signaling-assisted strategy into an entanglement-assisted one and prove an approximation ratio of (1−e−1)(1 - e^{-1})(1−e−1) in success probabilities for the special case of measurement channels. For fully quantum channels, we give a weaker (dimension dependent) approximation ratio, that is nevertheless still tight to characterize the strong converse exponent of entanglement-assisted channel coding [Li and Yao, IEEE Tran.~Inf.~Theory (2024)]. Our derivations leverage ideas from position-based coding, quantum decoupling theorems, the matrix Chernoff inequality, and input flattening techniques.
We study relaxations of entanglement-assisted quantum channel coding and establish that non-signaling assistance and a natural semi-definite programming relaxation — termed meta-converse — are equivalent in terms of success probabilities. We then present a rounding procedure that transforms any non-signaling-assisted strategy into an entanglement-assisted one and prove an approximation ratio of (1–e−1) in success probabilities for the special case of measurement channels. For fully quantum channels, we give a weaker (dimension dependent) approximation ratio, that is nevertheless still tight to characterize the strong converse exponent of entanglement-assisted channel coding [Li and Yao, IEEE Tran. Inf. Theory (2024)]. Our derivations leverage ideas from position-based coding, quantum decoupling theorems, the matrix Chernoff inequality, and input flattening techniques.
The one-shot success probability of a noisy classical channel for transmitting one classical bit is the optimal probability with which the bit can be successfully sent via a single use of the channel. Prevedel et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 110505 (2011)] recently showed that for a specific channel, this quantity can be increased if the parties using the channel share an entangled quantum state. In this paper, we characterize the optimal entanglement-assisted protocols in terms of the radius of a set of operators associated with the channel. This characterization can be used to construct optimal entanglement-assisted protocols for a given classical channel and to prove the limits of such protocols. As an example, we show that the Prevedel et al. protocol is optimal for two-qubit entanglement. We also prove some tight upper bounds on the improvement that can be obtained from quantum and nonsignaling correlations.