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Information Theoretic Methods for Future Communication Systems

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A special issue of Entropy (ISSN 1099-4300). This special issue belongs to the section "Information Theory, Probability and Statistics".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (16 October 2022) | Viewed by 34426

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Onur Günlü

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Guest Editor

Information Coding Division, Linköping University, 58183 Linköping, Sweden
Interests: information theoretic privacy and security; coding theory; private learning; secure function computation; physical layer security
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Prof. Dr. Rafael F. Schaefer

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Guest Editor

Chair of Communications Engineering and Security, University of Siegen, 57076 Siegen, Germany
Interests: information theory; communications; physical layer security
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Prof. Dr. Holger Boche

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Guest Editor

Institute of Theoretical Information Technology, Technical University of Munich, 80333 Munich, Germany
Interests: information theory; signal processing; communication theory

Prof. Dr. H. Vincent Poor

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Guest Editor

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA
Interests: information theory; statistical signal processing; stochastic analysis
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

It is anticipated that future communication systems will involve new technologies that will require high-speed computations using large amounts of data in order to take advantage of data-driven methods for improving services and providing reliability and other benefits. In many cases, information theory can provide a fundamental understanding of the limits on reliability, robustness, secrecy, privacy, resiliency, and latency of such systems. The aim of this Special Issue is to develop a collection of top information and coding theoretic results that provide such insights for future communication systems. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, information and coding theory for:

Semantic and goal-oriented communications;
Joint communication and sensing;
Provable security and privacy;
Machine learning for communications;
Distributed function computation;
Feedback communication systems;
Intelligent communication environments;
THz communications;
Identification via channels.

Reviews for this Special Issue will be handled by Entropy, but the Special Issue Editors can be contacted for questions and requests before, during, and after paper submission.

Dr. Onur Günlü
Prof. Dr. Rafael F. Schaefer
Prof. Dr. Holger Boche
Prof. Dr. H. Vincent Poor
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Entropy is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Shannon theory
future communication systems
optimal code constructions
B5G & 6G
IoT & IoV

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Published Papers (13 papers)

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Editorial

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2 pages, 165 KiB

Open AccessEditorial

Information Theoretic Methods for Future Communication Systems

by Onur Günlü, Rafael F. Schaefer, Holger Boche and H. Vincent Poor

Entropy 2023, 25(3), 392; https://doi.org/10.3390/e25030392 - 21 Feb 2023

Viewed by 1719

Abstract

It is anticipated that future communication systems will involve the use of new technologies, requiring high-speed computations using large amounts of data, in order to take advantage of data-driven methods for improving services and providing reliability and other benefits [...] Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Information Theoretic Methods for Future Communication Systems)

Research

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19 pages, 785 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Straggler- and Adversary-Tolerant Secure Distributed Matrix Multiplication Using Polynomial Codes

by Eimear Byrne, Oliver W. Gnilke and Jörg Kliewer

Entropy 2023, 25(2), 266; https://doi.org/10.3390/e25020266 - 31 Jan 2023

Cited by 9 | Viewed by 1751

Abstract

Large matrix multiplications commonly take place in large-scale machine-learning applications. Often, the sheer size of these matrices prevent carrying out the multiplication at a single server. Therefore, these operations are typically offloaded to a distributed computing platform with a master server and a large amount of workers in the cloud, operating in parallel. For such distributed platforms, it has been recently shown that coding over the input data matrices can reduce the computational delay by introducing a tolerance against straggling workers, i.e., workers for which execution time significantly lags with respect to the average. In addition to exact recovery, we impose a security constraint on both matrices to be multiplied. Specifically, we assume that workers can collude and eavesdrop on the content of these matrices. For this problem, we introduce a new class of polynomial codes with fewer non-zero coefficients than the degree +1. We provide closed-form expressions for the recovery threshold and show that our construction improves the recovery threshold of existing schemes in the literature, in particular for larger matrix dimensions and a moderate to large number of colluding workers. In the absence of any security constraints, we show that our construction is optimal in terms of recovery threshold. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Information Theoretic Methods for Future Communication Systems)

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23 pages, 416 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Broadcast Approach to Uplink NOMA: Queuing Delay Analysis

by Maha Zohdy, Ali Tajer and Shlomo Shamai (Shitz)

Entropy 2022, 24(12), 1757; https://doi.org/10.3390/e24121757 - 30 Nov 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2112

Abstract

Emerging wireless technologies are envisioned to support a variety of applications that require simultaneously maintaining low latency and high reliability. Non-orthogonal multiple access techniques constitute one candidate for grant-free transmission alleviating the signaling requirements for uplink transmissions. In open-loop transmissions over fading channels, in which the transmitters do not have access to the channel state information, the existing approaches are prone to facing frequent outage events. Such outage events lead to repeated re-transmissions of the duplicate information packets, penalizing the latency. This paper proposes a multi-access broadcast approach in which each user splits its information stream into several information layers, each adapted to one possible channel state. This approach facilitates preventing outage events and improves the overall transmission latency. Based on the proposed approach, the average queuing delay of each user is analyzed for different arrival processes at each transmitter. First, for deterministic arrivals, closed-form lower and upper bounds on the average delay are characterized analytically. Secondly, for Poisson arrivals, a closed-form expression for the average delay is delineated using the Pollaczek-Khinchin formula. Based on the established bounds, the proposed approach achieves less average delay than single-layer outage approaches. Under optimal power allocation among the encoded layers, numerical evaluations demonstrate that the proposed approach significantly minimizes average sum delays compared to traditional outage approaches, especially under high arrival rates. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Information Theoretic Methods for Future Communication Systems)

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22 pages, 394 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

Private Key and Decoder Side Information for Secure and Private Source Coding

by Onur Günlü, Rafael F. Schaefer, Holger Boche and Harold Vincent Poor

Entropy 2022, 24(12), 1716; https://doi.org/10.3390/e24121716 - 24 Nov 2022

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2184

Abstract

We extend the problem of secure source coding by considering a remote source whose noisy measurements are correlated random variables used for secure source reconstruction. The main additions to the problem are as follows:

(1)

all terminals noncausally observe a noisy [...] Read more.

(1)

all terminals noncausally observe a noisy measurement of the remote source;

(2)

a private key is available to all legitimate terminals;

(3)

the public communication link between the encoder and decoder is rate-limited; and

(4)

the secrecy leakage to the eavesdropper is measured with respect to the encoder input, whereas the privacy leakage is measured with respect to the remote source. Exact rate regions are characterized for a lossy source coding problem with a private key, remote source, and decoder side information under security, privacy, communication, and distortion constraints. By replacing the distortion constraint with a reliability constraint, we obtain the exact rate region for the lossless case as well. Furthermore, the lossy rate region for scalar discrete-time Gaussian sources and measurement channels is established. An achievable lossy rate region that can be numerically computed is also provided for binary-input multiple additive discrete-time Gaussian noise measurement channels. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Information Theoretic Methods for Future Communication Systems)

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19 pages, 552 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

Orthogonal Time Frequency Space Modulation Based on the Discrete Zak Transform

by Franz Lampel, Hamdi Joudeh, Alex Alvarado and Frans M. J. Willems

Entropy 2022, 24(12), 1704; https://doi.org/10.3390/e24121704 - 22 Nov 2022

Cited by 13 | Viewed by 3429

Abstract

In orthogonal time frequency space (OTFS) modulation, information-carrying symbols reside in the delay-Doppler (DD) domain. By operating in the DD domain, an appealing property for communication arises: time-frequency (TF) dispersive channels encountered in high-mobility environments become time-invariant. OTFS outperforms orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) in high-mobility scenarios, making it an ideal waveform candidate for 6G. Generally, OTFS is considered a pre- and postprocessing step for OFDM. However, the so-called Zak transform provides the fundamental relation between the DD and time domain. In this work, we propose an OTFS system based on the discrete Zak transform (DZT). To this end, we discuss the DZT and establish the input–output relation for time-frequency (TF) dispersive channels solely by the properties of the DZT. The presented formulation simplifies the derivation and analysis of the input–output relation of the TF dispersive channel in the DD domain. Based on the presented formulation, we show that operating in the DD incurs no loss in capacity. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Information Theoretic Methods for Future Communication Systems)

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26 pages, 2101 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Gaussian Multiuser Wiretap Channels in the Presence of a Jammer-Aided Eavesdropper

by Rémi A. Chou and Aylin Yener

Entropy 2022, 24(11), 1595; https://doi.org/10.3390/e24111595 - 2 Nov 2022

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1715

Abstract

This paper considers secure communication in the presence of an eavesdropper and a malicious jammer. The jammer is assumed to be oblivious of the communication signals emitted by the legitimate transmitter(s) but can employ any jamming strategy subject to a given power constraint and shares her jamming signal with the eavesdropper. Four such models are considered: (i) the Gaussian point-to-point wiretap channel; (ii) the Gaussian multiple-access wiretap channel; (iii) the Gaussian broadcast wiretap channel; and (iv) the Gaussian symmetric interference wiretap channel. The use of pre-shared randomness between the legitimate users is not allowed in our models. Inner and outer bounds are derived for these four models. For (i), the secrecy capacity is obtained. For (ii) and (iv) under a degraded setup, the optimal secrecy sum-rate is characterized. Finally, for (iii), ranges of model parameter values for which the inner and outer bounds coincide are identified. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Information Theoretic Methods for Future Communication Systems)

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16 pages, 305 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Bounds for Coding Theory over Rings

by Niklas Gassner, Marcus Greferath, Joachim Rosenthal and Violetta Weger

Entropy 2022, 24(10), 1473; https://doi.org/10.3390/e24101473 - 16 Oct 2022

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2293

Abstract

Coding theory where the alphabet is identified with the elements of a ring or a module has become an important research topic over the last 30 years. It has been well established that, with the generalization of the algebraic structure to rings, there is a need to also generalize the underlying metric beyond the usual Hamming weight used in traditional coding theory over finite fields. This paper introduces a generalization of the weight introduced by Shi, Wu and Krotov, called overweight. Additionally, this weight can be seen as a generalization of the Lee weight on the integers modulo 4 and as a generalization of Krotov’s weight over the integers modulo 2^s for any positive integer s. For this weight, we provide a number of well-known bounds, including a Singleton bound, a Plotkin bound, a sphere-packing bound and a Gilbert–Varshamov bound. In addition to the overweight, we also study a well-known metric on finite rings, namely the homogeneous metric, which also extends the Lee metric over the integers modulo 4 and is thus heavily connected to the overweight. We provide a new bound that has been missing in the literature for homogeneous metric, namely the Johnson bound. To prove this bound, we use an upper estimate on the sum of the distances of all distinct codewords that depends only on the length, the average weight and the maximum weight of a codeword. An effective such bound is not known for the overweight. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Information Theoretic Methods for Future Communication Systems)

33 pages, 1670 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Degrees of Freedom of a K-User Interference Channel in the Presence of an Instantaneous Relay

by Ali H. Abdollahi Bafghi, Mahtab Mirmohseni and Masoumeh Nasiri-Kenari

Entropy 2022, 24(8), 1078; https://doi.org/10.3390/e24081078 - 4 Aug 2022

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1861

Abstract

In this paper, we study the degrees of freedom (DoF) of a frequency-selective K-user interference channel in the presence of an instantaneous relay (IR) with multiple receiving and transmitting antennas. We investigate two scenarios based on the IR antennas’ cooperation ability. First, we assume that the IR receiving and transmitting antennas can coordinate with each other and that the transmitted signal of each transmitting antenna can depend on the received signals of all receiving antennas, and we derive lower and upper bounds for the sum DoF of this model. In an interference alignment scheme, we divide receivers into two groups called clean and dirty receivers. We design our scheme such that a part of the messages of clean receivers can be de-multiplexed at the IR. Thus, the IR can use these message streams for an interference cancellation at the clean receivers. Next, we consider an IR, the antennas of which do not have coordination with each other and where the transmitted signal of each transmitting antenna depends only on the received signal of its corresponding receiving antenna. We also derive lower and upper bounds for the sum DoF for this model of IR. We show that the achievable sum DoF decreases considerably compared with the coordinated case. In both of these models, our schemes achieve the maximum K sum DoF if the number of transmitting and receiving antennas is more than a finite threshold. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Information Theoretic Methods for Future Communication Systems)

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29 pages, 550 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Coded Caching for Broadcast Networks with User Cooperation

by Zhenhao Huang, Jiahui Chen, Xiaowen You, Shuai Ma and Youlong Wu

Entropy 2022, 24(8), 1034; https://doi.org/10.3390/e24081034 - 27 Jul 2022

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2365

Abstract

Caching technique is a promising approach to reduce the heavy traffic load and improve user latency experience for the Internet of Things (IoT). In this paper, by exploiting edge cache resources and communication opportunities in device-to-device (D2D) networks and broadcast networks, two novel coded caching schemes are proposed that greatly reduce transmission latency for the centralized and decentralized caching settings, respectively. In addition to the multicast gain, both schemes obtain an additional cooperation gain offered by user cooperation and an additional parallel gain offered by the parallel transmission among the server and users. With a newly established lower bound on the transmission delay, we prove that the centralized coded caching scheme is order-optimal, i.e., achieving a constant multiplicative gap within the minimum transmission delay. The decentralized coded caching scheme is also order-optimal if each user’s cache size is larger than a threshold which approaches zero as the total number of users tends to infinity. Moreover, theoretical analysis shows that to reduce the transmission delay, the number of users sending signals simultaneously should be appropriately chosen according to the user’s cache size, and always letting more users send information in parallel could cause high transmission delay. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Information Theoretic Methods for Future Communication Systems)

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18 pages, 1285 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Reliable Semantic Communication System Enabled by Knowledge Graph

by Shengteng Jiang, Yueling Liu, Yichi Zhang, Peng Luo, Kuo Cao, Jun Xiong, Haitao Zhao and Jibo Wei

Entropy 2022, 24(6), 846; https://doi.org/10.3390/e24060846 - 20 Jun 2022

Cited by 42 | Viewed by 5227

Abstract

Semantic communication is a promising technology used to overcome the challenges of large bandwidth and power requirements caused by the data explosion. Semantic representation is an important issue in semantic communication. The knowledge graph, powered by deep learning, can improve the accuracy of semantic representation while removing semantic ambiguity. Therefore, we propose a semantic communication system based on the knowledge graph. Specifically, in our system, the transmitted sentences are converted into triplets by using the knowledge graph. Triplets can be viewed as basic semantic symbols for semantic extraction and restoration and can be sorted based on semantic importance. Moreover, the proposed communication system adaptively adjusts the transmitted contents according to channel quality and allocates more transmission resources to important triplets to enhance communication reliability. Simulation results show that the proposed system significantly enhances the reliability of the communication in the low signal-to-noise regime compared to the traditional schemes. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Information Theoretic Methods for Future Communication Systems)

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19 pages, 428 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

Low-Resolution Precoding for Multi-Antenna Downlink Channels and OFDM

by Andrei Stefan Nedelcu, Fabian Steiner and Gerhard Kramer

Entropy 2022, 24(4), 504; https://doi.org/10.3390/e24040504 - 4 Apr 2022

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 3129 | Correction

Abstract

Downlink precoding is considered for multi-path multi-input single-output channels where the base station uses orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing and low-resolution signaling. A quantized coordinate minimization (QCM) algorithm is proposed and its performance is compared to other precoding algorithms including squared infinity-norm relaxation (SQUID), multi-antenna greedy iterative quantization (MAGIQ), and maximum safety margin precoding. MAGIQ and QCM achieve the highest information rates and QCM has the lowest complexity measured in the number of multiplications. The information rates are computed for pilot-aided channel estimation and data-aided channel estimation. Bit error rates for a 5G low-density parity-check code confirm the information-theoretic calculations. Simulations with imperfect channel knowledge at the transmitter show that the performance of QCM and SQUID degrades in a similar fashion as zero-forcing precoding with high resolution quantizers. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Information Theoretic Methods for Future Communication Systems)

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Review

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20 pages, 2908 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperReview

Coding for Large-Scale Distributed Machine Learning

by Ming Xiao and Mikael Skoglund

Entropy 2022, 24(9), 1284; https://doi.org/10.3390/e24091284 - 12 Sep 2022

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 3080

Abstract

This article aims to give a comprehensive and rigorous review of the principles and recent development of coding for large-scale distributed machine learning (DML). With increasing data volumes and the pervasive deployment of sensors and computing machines, machine learning has become more distributed. Moreover, the involved computing nodes and data volumes for learning tasks have also increased significantly. For large-scale distributed learning systems, significant challenges have appeared in terms of delay, errors, efficiency, etc. To address the problems, various error-control or performance-boosting schemes have been proposed recently for different aspects, such as the duplication of computing nodes. More recently, error-control coding has been investigated for DML to improve reliability and efficiency. The benefits of coding for DML include high-efficiency, low complexity, etc. Despite the benefits and recent progress, however, there is still a lack of comprehensive survey on this topic, especially for large-scale learning. This paper seeks to introduce the theories and algorithms of coding for DML. For primal-based DML schemes, we first discuss the gradient coding with the optimal code distance. Then, we introduce random coding for gradient-based DML. For primal–dual-based DML, i.e., ADMM (alternating direction method of multipliers), we propose a separate coding method for two steps of distributed optimization. Then coding schemes for different steps are discussed. Finally, a few potential directions for future works are also given. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Information Theoretic Methods for Future Communication Systems)

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