No Arabic abstract
We present a novel autoencoder-based approach for designing codes that provide unequal error protection (UEP) capabilities. The proposed design is based on a generalization of an autoencoder loss function that accommodates both message-wise and bit-wise UEP scenarios. In both scenarios, the generalized loss function can be adjusted using an associated weight vector to trade off error probabilities corresponding to different importance classes. For message-wise UEP, we compare the proposed autoencoder-based UEP codes with a union of random coset codes. For bit-wise UEP, the proposed codes are compared with UEP rateless spinal codes and the superposition of random Gaussian codes. In all cases, the autoencoder-based codes show superior performance while providing design simplicity and flexibility in trading off error protection among different importance classes.
Large-scale machine learning and data mining methods routinely distribute computations across multiple agents to parallelize processing. The time required for computation at the agents is affected by the availability of local resources giving rise to the straggler problem in which the computation results are held back by unresponsive agents. For this problem, linear coding of the matrix sub-blocks can be used to introduce resilience toward straggling. The Parameter Server (PS) utilizes a channel code and distributes the matrices to the workers for multiplication. It then produces an approximation to the desired matrix multiplication using the results of the computations received at a given deadline. In this paper, we propose to employ Unequal Error Protection (UEP) codes to alleviate the straggler problem. The resiliency level of each sub-block is chosen according to its norm as blocks with larger norms have higher effects on the result of the matrix multiplication. We validate the effectiveness of our scheme both theoretically and through numerical evaluations. We derive a theoretical characterization of the performance of UEP using random linear codes, and compare it the case of equal error protection. We also apply the proposed coding strategy to the computation of the back-propagation step in the training of a Deep Neural Network (DNN), for which we investigate the fundamental trade-off between precision and the time required for the computations.
We consider network coding for networks experiencing worst-case bit-flip errors, and argue that this is a reasonable model for highly dynamic wireless network transmissions. We demonstrate that in this setup prior network error-correcting schemes can be arbitrarily far from achieving the optimal network throughput. We propose a new metric for errors under this model. Using this metric, we prove a new Hamming-type upper bound on the network capacity. We also show a commensurate lower bound based on GV-type codes that can be used for error-correction. The codes used to attain the lower bound are non-coherent (do not require prior knowledge of network topology). The end-to-end nature of our design enables our codes to be overlaid on classical distributed random linear network codes. Further, we free internal nodes from having to implement potentially computationally intensive link-by-link error-correction.
Polar codes are a class of linear block codes that provably achieves channel capacity, and have been selected as a coding scheme for $5^{rm th}$ generation wireless communication standards. Successive-cancellation (SC) decoding of polar codes has mediocre error-correction performance on short to moderate codeword lengths: the SC-Flip decoding algorithm is one of the solutions that have been proposed to overcome this issue. On the other hand, SC-Flip has a higher implementation complexity compared to SC due to the required log-likelihood ratio (LLR) selection and sorting process. Moreover, it requires a high number of iterations to reach good error-correction performance. In this work, we propose two techniques to improve the SC-Flip decoding algorithm for low-rate codes, based on the observation of channel-induced error distributions. The first one is a fixed index selection (FIS) scheme to avoid the substantial implementation cost of LLR selection and sorting with no cost on error-correction performance. The second is an enhanced index selection (EIS) criterion to improve the error-correction performance of SC-Flip decoding. A reduction of $24.6%$ in the implementation cost of logic elements is estimated with the FIS approach, while simulation results show that EIS leads to an improvement on error-correction performance improvement up to $0.42$ dB at a target FER of $10^{-4}$.
The concept of asymmetric entanglement-assisted quantum error-correcting code (asymmetric EAQECC) is introduced in this article. Codes of this type take advantage of the asymmetry in quantum errors since phase-shift errors are more probable than qudit-flip errors. Moreover, they use pre-shared entanglement between encoder and decoder to simplify the theory of quantum error correction and increase the communication capacity. Thus, asymmetric EAQECCs can be constructed from any pair of classical linear codes over an arbitrary field. Their parameters are described and a Gilbert-Varshamov bound is presented. Explicit parameters of asymmetric EAQECCs from BCH codes are computed and examples exceeding the introduced Gilbert-Varshamov bound are shown.
A locally recoverable code is an error-correcting code such that any erasure in a coordinate of a codeword can be recovered from a set of other few coordinates. In this article we introduce a model of local recoverable codes that also includes local error detection. The cases of the Reed-Solomon and Locally Recoverable Reed-Solomon codes are treated in some detail.