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Semantic- and task-oriented communication has emerged as a promising approach to reducing the latency and bandwidth requirements of next-generation mobile networks by transmitting only the most relevant information needed to complete a specific task at the receiver. This is particularly advantageous for machine-oriented communication of high data rate content, such as images and videos, where the goal is rapid and accurate inference, rather than perfect signal reconstruction. While semantic- and task-oriented compression can be implemented in conventional communication systems, joint source-channel coding (JSCC) offers an alternative end-to-end approach by optimizing compression and channel coding together, or even directly mapping the source signal to the modulated waveform. Although all digital communication systems today rely on separation, thanks to its modularity, JSCC is known to achieve higher performance in finite blocklength scenarios, and to avoid cliff and the levelling-off effects in time-varying channel scenarios. This article provides an overview of the information theoretic foundations of JSCC, surveys practical JSCC designs over the decades, and discusses the reasons for their limited adoption in practical systems. We then examine the recent resurgence of JSCC, driven by the integration of deep learning techniques, particularly through DeepJSCC, highlighting its many surprising advantages in various scenarios. Finally, we discuss why it may be time to reconsider today's strictly separate architectures, and reintroduce JSCC to enable high-fidelity, low-latency communications in critical applications such as autonomous driving, drone surveillance, or wearable systems., Comment: Under review for possible publication

This paper establishes the fundamental limits of a multi-access system where multiple users communicate to a legitimate receiver in presence of an external warden. Only a specific subset of the users, called covert users, needs their communication to remain undetected to the warden, while the remaining non-covert users have no such constraint. The fundamental limits show a tradeoff between the different rates that are simultaneously achievable at the various users in function of the secret-key rates that the different users share with the legitimate receiver. Interestingly, the presence of the non-covert users can enhance the capacities of the covert users, especially under stringent secret-key budgets. Our findings underscore the essential requirement of employing a multiplexing (coded time-sharing) strategy to exhaust the fundamental region of all rates that are simultaneously achievable at the covert and the non-covert users. As a side-product of our results, we also establish the covert-capacity secret-key tradeoff for standard single-user and multi-access covert communication systems (without non-covert users), i.e., the largest covert rates that are achievable under given secret-key rate budgets. Previous works had only established the minimum secret-key rates required at largest covert rates., Comment: Submitted for review to IEEE Transactions on Information Theory

The fundamental limit of Semantic Communications (joint source-channel coding) is established when the transmission needs to be kept covert from an external warden. We derive information-theoretic achievability and matching converse results and we show that source and channel coding separation holds for this setup. Furthermore, we show through an experimental setup that one can train a deep neural network to achieve covert semantic communication for the classification task. Our numerical experiments confirm our theoretical findings, which indicate that for reliable joint source-channel coding the number of transmitted source symbols can only scale as the square-root of the number of channel uses., Comment: Submitted to GLOBECOM'2024 for review

In this paper, we characterize the fundamental limits of a communication system with three users (i.e., three transmitters) and a single receiver where communication from two covert users must remain undetectable to an external warden. Our results show a tradeoff between the highest rates that are simultaneously achievable for the three users. They further show that the presence of a non-covert user in the system can enhance the capacities of the covert users under stringent secret-key constraints. To derive our fundamental limits, we provide an information-theoretic converse proof and present a coding scheme that achieves the performance of our converse result. Our coding scheme is based on multiplexing different code phases, which seems to be essential to exhaust the entire tradeoff region between the rates at the covert and the two non-covert users. This property is reminiscent of the setup with multiple non-covert users, where multiplexing is also required to exhaust the entire rate-region., Comment: To be presented at ICC2024

A point-to-point integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) system is considered where a transmitter conveys a message to a receiver over a discrete memoryless channel (DMC) and simultaneously estimates the state of the channel through the backscattered signals of the emitted waveform. We derive achievability and converse bounds on the rate-distortion-error tradeoff in the finite blocklength regime, and also characterize the second-order rate-distortion-error region for the proposed setup. Numerical analysis shows that our proposed joint ISAC scheme significantly outperforms traditional time-sharing based schemes where the available resources are split between the sensing and communication tasks.

To answer the call for a new theoretical framework to simultaneously accommodate random user activity and heterogeneous delay traffic in Internet of Things (IoT) systems, in this paper we propose coding schemes and information-theoretic converse results for the transmission of heterogeneous delay traffic over interference networks with random user activity and random data arrivals. The heterogeneous traffic is composed of delay-tolerant traffic and delay-sensitive traffic where only the former can benefit from transmitter and receiver cooperation since the latter is subject to stringent decoding delays. The total number of cooperation rounds at transmitter and receiver sides is limited to $\D$ rounds. Each transmitter is active with probability $\rho \in [0,1]$. We consider two different models for the arrival of the mixed-delay traffic: in Model~$1$, each active transmitter sends a delay-tolerant message, and with probability $\rho_f \in [0,1]$ also transmits an additional delay-sensitive message; in Model~$2$, each active transmitter sends either a delay-sensitive message with probability $\rho_f$ or a delay-tolerant message with probability $1-\rho_f$. We derive inner and outer bounds on the fundamental per-user multiplexing gain (MG) region of the symmetric Wyner network as well as inner bounds on the fundamental MG region of the hexagonal model. Our inner and outer bounds are generally very close and coincide in special cases. They also show that when both transmitters and receivers can cooperate, then under Model~$1$, transmitting delay-sensitive messages hardly causes any penalty on the sum per-user MG, and under Model~$2$, operating at large delay-sensitive per-user MGs incurs no penalty on the delay-tolerant per-user MG and thus increases the sum per-user MG.

A point-to-point communication is considered where a roadside unite (RSU) wishes to simultaneously send messages of enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) and ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC) services to a vehicle. The eMBB message arrives at the beginning of a block and its transmission lasts over the entire block. During each eMBB transmission block, random arrivals of URLLC messages are assumed. To improve the reliability of the URLLC transmissions, the RSU reinforces their transmissions by mitigating the interference of eMBB transmission by means of dirty paper coding (DPC). In the proposed coding scheme, the eMBB messages are decoded based on two approaches: treating interference as noise, and successive interference cancellation. Rigorous bounds are derived for the error probabilities of eMBB and URLLC transmissions achieved by our scheme. Numerical results illustrate that they are lower than bounds for standard time-sharing.

This paper establishes the fundamental limits of a two-user single-receiver system where communication from User 1 (but not from User 2) needs to be undetectable to an external warden. Our fundamental limits show a tradeoff between the highest rates (or square-root rates) that are simultaneously achievable for the two users. Moreover, coded time-sharing for both users is fundamentally required on most channels, which distinguishes this setup from the more classical setups with either only covert users or only non-covert users. Interestingly, the presence of a non-covert user can be beneficial for improving the covert capacity of the other user., Comment: Accepted to 2023 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT)

This paper considers information-theoretic models for integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) over multi-access channels (MAC) and device-to-device (D2D) communication. The models are general and include as special cases scenarios with and without perfect or imperfect state-information at the MAC receiver as well as causal state-information at the D2D terminals. For both setups, we propose collaborative sensing ISAC schemes where terminals not only convey data to the other terminals but also state-information that they extract from their previous observations. This state-information can be exploited at the other terminals to improve their sensing performances. Indeed, as we show through examples, our schemes improve over previous non-collaborative schemes in terms of their achievable rate-distortion tradeoffs. For D2D we propose two schemes, one where compression of state information is separated from channel coding and one where it is integrated via a hybrid coding approach.

The paper characterizes the fundamental limits of integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) systems with a bi-static radar, where the radar receiver is located close to the transmitter and estimates or detects the state based on the transmitter's channel inputs and the backscattered signals. Two models are considered. In the first model, the memoryless state sequence is distributed according to a fixed distribution and the goal of the radar receiver is to reconstruct this state-sequence with smallest possible distortion. In the second model, the memoryless state is distributed either according to $P_S$ or to $Q_S$ and the radar's goal is to detect this underlying distribution so that the missed-detection error probability has maximum exponential decay-rate (maximum Stein exponent). Similarly to previous results, our fundamental limits show that the tradeoff between sensing and communication solely stems from the empirical statistics of the transmitted codewords which influences both performances. The main technical contribution are two strong converse proofs that hold for all probabilities of communication error $\epsilon$ and excess-distortion probability or false-alarm probability $\delta$ summing to less than 1, $\epsilon+\delta < 1$. These proofs are based on two parallel change-of-measure arguments on the sets of typical sequences, one change-of-measure to obtain the desired bound on the communication rate, and the second to bound the sensing performance.

We study the state-dependent wiretap channel with non-causal channel state informations at the encoder in an integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) scenario. In this scenario, the transmitter communicates a message and a state sequence to a legitimate receiver while keeping the message and state-information secret from an external eavesdropper. This paper presents a new achievability result for this doubly-secret scenario, which recovers as special cases the best-known achievability results for the setups without security constraints or with only a security constraint on the message. The impact of the secrecy constraint (no secrecy-constraint, secrecy constraint only on the message, or on the message and the state) is analyzed at hand of a Gaussian-state and Gaussian-channel example.

The paper presents exponentially-strong converses for source-coding, channel coding, and hypothesis testing problems. More specifically, it presents alternative proofs for the well-known exponentially-strong converse bounds for almost lossless source-coding with side-information and for channel coding over a discrete memoryless channel (DMC). These alternative proofs are solely based on a change of measure argument on the sets of conditionally or jointly typical sequences that result in a correct decision, and on the analysis of these measures in the asymptotic regime of infinite blocklengths. The paper also presents a new exponentially-strong converse for the K-hop hypothesis testing against independence problem with certain Markov chains and a strong converse for the two-terminal Lround interactive compression problem with multiple distortion constraints that depend on both sources and both reconstructions. This latter problem includes as special cases the Wyner-Ziv problem, the interactive function computation problem, and the compression with lossy common reconstruction problem. These new strong converse proofs are derived using similar change of measure arguments as described above and by additionally proving that certain Markov chains involving auxiliary random variables hold in the asymptotic regime of infinite blocklengths. As shown in related publications, the same method also yields converse bounds under expected resource constraints., Comment: Submitted to IEEE Trans. on IT

We study a distributed binary hypothesis testing (HT) problem with communication and security constraints, involving three parties: a remote sensor called Alice, a legitimate decision centre called Bob, and an eavesdropper called Eve, all having their own source observations. In this system, Alice conveys a rate R description of her observation to Bob, and Bob performs a binary hypothesis test on the joint distribution underlying his and Alice's observations. The goal of Alice and Bob is to maximise the exponential decay of Bob's miss-detection (type II-error) probability under two constraints: Bob's false alarm-probability (type-I error) probability has to stay below a given threshold and Eve's uncertainty (equivocation) about Alice's observations should stay above a given security threshold even when Eve learns Alice's message. For the special case of testing against independence, we characterise the largest possible type-II error exponent under the described type-I error probability and security constraints., Comment: submitted to ITW 2023

We consider a full-duplex wireless Distributed Computing (DC) system under the MapReduce framework. New upper and lower bounds on the optimal tradeoff between Normalized Delivery Time (NDT) and computation load are presented. The upper bound strictly improves over the previous reported upper bounds and is based on a novel interference alignment (IA) scheme tailored to the interference cancellation capabilities of MapReduce nodes. The lower bound is proved through information-theoretic converse arguments.

We consider a multi-hop distributed hypothesis testing problem with multiple decision centers (DCs) for testing against independence and where the observations obey some Markov chain. For this system, we characterize the fundamental type-II error exponents region, i.e., the type-II error exponents that the various DCs can achieve simultaneously, under expected rate-constraints. Our results show that this fundamental exponents region is boosted compared to the region under maximum-rate constraints, and that it depends on the permissible type-I error probabilities. When all DCs have equal permissible type-I error probabilities, the exponents region is rectangular and all DCs can simultaneously achieve their optimal type-II error exponents. When the DCs have different permissible type-I error probabilities, a tradeoff between the type-II error exponents at the different DCs arises. New achievability and converse proofs are presented. For the achievability, a new multiplexing and rate-sharing strategy is proposed. The converse proof is based on applying different change of measure arguments in parallel and on proving asymptotic Markov chains. For the special cases $K = 2$ and $K = 3$, we provide simplified expressions for the exponents region; a similar simplification is conjectured for arbitrary $K\geq 2$., Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Information Theory

Wyner's soft-handoff network is considered where transmitters simultaneously send messages of enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) and ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC) services. Due to the low-latency requirements, the URLLC messages are transmitted over fewer channel uses compared to the eMBB messages. To improve the reliability of the URLLC transmissions, we propose a coding scheme with finite blocklength codewords that exploits dirty-paper coding (DPC) to precancel the interference from eMBB transmissions. Rigorous bounds are derived for the error probabilities of eMBB and URLLC transmissions achieved by our scheme. Numerical results illustrate that they are lower than for standard time-sharing.

The main contribution of this paper is a strong converse result for $K$-hop distributed hypothesis testing against independence with multiple (intermediate) decision centers under a Markov condition. Our result shows that the set of type-II error exponents that can simultaneously be achieved at all the terminals does not depend on the maximum permissible type-I error probabilities. Our strong converse proof is based on a change of measure argument and on the asymptotic proof of specific Markov chains. This proof method can also be used for other converse proofs, and is appealing because it does not require resorting to variational characterizations or blowing-up methods as in previous related proofs.

Fifth generation mobile communication systems (5G) have to accommodate both Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communication (URLLC) and enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) services. While, eMBB applications support high data rates, URLLC services aim at guaranteeing low-latencies and high-reliabilities. eMBB and URLLC services are scheduled on the same frequency band, where the different latency requirements of the communications render the coexistence challenging. In this survey, we review, from an information theoretic perspective, coding schemes that simultaneously accommodate URLLC and eMBB transmissions and show that they outperform traditional scheduling approaches. Various communication scenarios are considered, including point-to-point channels, broadcast channels, interference networks, cellular models, and cloud radio access networks (C-RANs). The main focus is on the set of rate pairs that can simultaneously be achieved for URLLC and eMBB messages, which well captures the tension between the two types of communications. We also discuss finite-blocklength results where the measure of interest is the set of error probability pairs that can simultaneously be achieved on the two communication regimes.

We study distributed binary hypothesis testing with a single sensor and two remote decision centers that are also equipped with local sensors. The communication between the sensor and the two decision centers takes place over three links: a shared link to both centers and an individual link to each of the two centers. All communication links are subject to expected rate constraints. This paper characterizes the optimal exponents region of the type-II error for given type-I error thresholds at the two decision centers and further simplifies the expressions in the special case of having only the single shared link. The exponents region illustrates a gain under expected rate constraints compared to equivalent maximum rate constraints. Moreover, it exhibits a tradeoff between the exponents achieved at the two centers., Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2106.12299

A memoryless state-dependent multiple-access channel (MAC) is considered, where two transmitters wish to convey their messages to a single receiver while simultaneously sensing (estimating) the respective states via generalized feedbacks. For this channel, an improved inner bound is provided on the fundamental rate-distortions tradeoff which characterizes the communication rates the transmitters can achieve while simultaneously ensuring that their state-estimates satisfy desired distortion criteria. The new inner bound is based on a scheme where each transmitter codes over the generalized feedback so as to improve the state estimation at the other transmitter. This is in contrast to the schemes proposed for point-to-point and broadcast channels where coding is used only for the transmission of messages and the optimal estimators operate on a symbol-by-symbol basis on the sequences of channel inputs and feedback outputs.

We consider a cooperative X-channel with $\sf K$ transmitters (TXs) and $\sf K$ receivers (Rxs) where Txs and Rxs are gathered into groups of size $\sf r$ respectively. Txs belonging to the same group cooperate to jointly transmit a message to each of the $\sf K- \sf r$ Rxs in all other groups, and each Rx individually decodes all its intended messages. By introducing a new interference alignment (IA) scheme, we prove that when $\sf K/\sf r$ is an integer the sum Degrees of Freedom (SDoF) of this channel is lower bounded by $2\sf r$ if $\sf K/\sf r \in \{2,3\}$ and by $\frac{\sf K(\sf K-\sf r)-\sf r^2}{2\sf K-3\sf r}$ if $\sf K/\sf r \geq 4$. We also prove that the SDoF is upper bounded by $\frac{\sf K(\sf K-\sf r)}{2\sf K-3\sf r}$. The proposed IA scheme finds application in a wireless distributed MapReduce framework, where it improves the normalized data delivery time (NDT) compared to the state of the art.

Cascaded binary hypothesis testing is studied in this paper with two decision centers at the relay and the receiver. All terminals have their own observations, where we assume that the observations at the transmitter, the relay, and the receiver form a Markov chain in this order. The communication occurs over two hops, from the transmitter to the relay and from the relay to the receiver. Expected rate constraints are imposed on both communication links. In this work, we characterize the optimal type-II error exponents at the two decision centers under constraints on the allowed type-I error probabilities. Our recent work characterized the optimal type-II error exponents in the special case when the two decision centers have same type-I error constraints and provided an achievability scheme for the general setup. To obtain the exact characterization for the general case, in this paper we provide a new converse proof as well as a new matching achievability scheme. Our results indicate that under unequal type-I error constraints at the relay and the receiver, a tradeoff arises between the maximum type-II error probabilities at these two terminals. Previous results showed that such a tradeoff does not exist under equal type-I error constraints or under general type-I error constraints when a maximum rate constraint is imposed on the communication links., Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2105.05917

This paper analyses the multiplexing gain (MG) achievable over Wyner's symmetric network with random user activity and random arrival of mixed-delay traffic. The mixed-delay traffic is composed of delay-tolerant traffic and delay-sensitive traffic where only the former can benefit from transmitter and receiver cooperation since the latter is subject to stringent decoding delays. The total number of cooperation rounds at transmitter and receiver sides is limited to $\D$ rounds. We derive inner and outer bounds on the MG region. In the limit as $\D\to \infty$, the bounds coincide and the results show that transmitting delay-sensitive messages does not cause any penalty on the sum MG. For finite $\D$ our bounds are still close and prove that the penalty caused by delay-sensitive transmissions is small.

The paper studies distributed binary hypothesis testing over a two-hop relay network where both the relay and the receiver decide on the hypothesis. Both communication links are subject to expected rate constraints, which differs from the classical assumption of maximum rate constraints. We exactly characterize the set of type-II error exponent pairs at the relay and the receiver when both type-I error probabilities are constrained by the same value $\epsilon>0$. No tradeoff is observed between the two exponents, i.e., one can simultaneously attain maximum type-II error exponents both at the relay and at the receiver. For $\epsilon_1 \neq \epsilon_2$, we present an achievable exponents region, which we obtain with a scheme that applies different versions of a basic two-hop scheme that is optimal under maximum rate constraints. We use the basic two-hop scheme with two choices of parameters and rates, depending on the transmitter's observed sequence. For $\epsilon_1=\epsilon_2$, a single choice is shown to be sufficient. Numerical simulations indicate that extending to three or more parameter choices is never beneficial.

This paper studies the channel capacity of intensity-modulation direct-detection (IM/DD) visible light communication (VLC) systems under both optical and electrical power constraints. Specifically, it derives the asymptotic capacities in the high and low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regimes under peak, first-moment, and second-moment constraints. The results show that first- and second-moment constraints are never simultaneously active in the asymptotic low-SNR regime, and only in few cases in the asymptotic high-SNR regime. Moreover, the second-moment constraint is more stringent in the asymptotic low-SNR regime than in the high-SNR regime., Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure

This paper analyzes the multiplexing gains (MG) for simultaneous transmission of delay-sensitive and delay-tolerant data over interference networks. In the considered model, only delay-tolerant data can profit from coordinated multipoint (CoMP) transmission or reception techniques, because delay-sensitive data has to be transmitted without further delay. Transmission of delay-tolerant data is also subject to a delay constraint, which is however less stringent than the one on delay-sensitive data. Different coding schemes are proposed, and the corresponding MG pairs for delay-sensitive and delay-tolerant data are characterized for Wyner's linear symmetric network and for Wyner's two-dimensional hexagonal network with and without sectorization. For Wyner's linear symmetric also an information-theoretic converse is established and shown to be exact whenever the cooperation rates are sufficiently large or the delay-sensitive MG is small or moderate. These results show that on Wyner's symmetric linear network and for sufficiently large cooperation rates, the largest MG for delay-sensitive data can be achieved without penalizing the maximum sum-MG of both delay-sensitive and delay-tolerant data. A similar conclusion holds for Wyner's hexagonal network only for the model with sectorization. In the model without sectorization, a penalty in sum-MG is incurred whenever one insists on a positive delay-sensitive MG., Comment: 41 pages, submitted to Transactions on Communications

A memoryless state-dependent broadcast channel (BC) is considered, where the transmitter wishes to convey two private messages to two receivers while simultaneously estimating the respective states via generalized feedback. The model at hand is motivated by a joint radar and communication system where radar and data applications share the same frequency band. For physically degraded BCs with i.i.d. state sequences, we characterize the capacity-distortion tradeoff region. For general BCs, we provide inner and outer bounds on the capacitydistortion region, as well as a sufficient condition when it is equal to the product of the capacity region and the set of achievable distortion. Interestingly, the proposed synergetic design significantly outperforms a conventional approach that splits the resource either for sensing or communication.

We investigate the testing-against-independence problem \mw{over a cooperative MAC} with two sensors and a single detector under an average rate constraint on the sensors-detector links. For this setup, we design a variable-length coding scheme that maximizes the achievable type-II error exponent when the type-I error probability is limited to $\epsilon$. Similarly to the single-link result, we show here that the optimal error exponent depends on $\epsilon$ and that variable-length coding allows to \mw{increase the rates over the optimal} fixed-length coding \mw{scheme} by the factor $(1-\epsilon)^{-1}$.

We consider updating strategies for a local cache which downloads time-sensitive files from a remote server through a bandwidth-constrained link. The files are requested randomly from the cache by local users according to a popularity distribution which varies over time according to a Markov chain structure. We measure the freshness of the requested time-sensitive files through their Age of Information (AoI). The goal is then to minimize the average AoI of all requested files by appropriately designing the local cache's downloading strategy. To achieve this goal, the original problem is relaxed and cast into a Constrained Markov Decision Problem (CMDP), which we solve using a Lagrangian approach and Linear Programming. Inspired by this solution for the relaxed problem, we propose a practical cache updating strategy that meets all the constraints of the original problem. Under certain assumptions, the practical updating strategy is shown to be optimal for the original problem in the asymptotic regime of a large number of files. For a finite number of files, we show the gain of our practical updating strategy over the traditional square-root-law strategy (which is optimal for fixed non time-varying file popularities) through numerical simulations., Comment: To appear ITW2020

It is well known that the capacity region of an average transmit power constrained Gaussian Broadcast Channel (GBC) with independent noise realizations at the receivers is enlarged by the presence of causal noiseless feedback. Capacity region enlargement is also known to be possible by using only passive noisy feedback, when the GBC has identical noise variances at the receivers. The last fact remains true even when the feedback noise variance is very high, and available only from one of the receivers. While such capacity enlargements are feasible for several other feedback models in the Gaussian BC setting, it is also known that feedback does not change the capacity region for physically degraded broadcast channels. In this paper, we consider a two user GBC with independent noise realizations at the receivers, where the feedback links from the receivers are corrupted by independent additive Gaussian noise processes. We investigate the set of four noise variances, two forward and two feedback, for which no capacity enlargement is possible. A sharp characterization of this region is derived, i.e., any quadruple outside the presented region will lead to a capacity enlargement, whereas quadruples inside will leave the capacity region unchanged. Our results lead to the conclusion that when the forward noise variances are different, too noisy a feedback from one of the receivers alone is not always beneficial for enlarging the capacity region, be it from the stronger user or the weaker one, in sharp contrast to the case of equal forward noise variances., Comment: 23 single column pages, 4 Figures

The problem of distributed testing against independence with variable-length coding is considered when the \emph{average} and not the \emph{maximum} communication load is constrained as in previous works. The paper characterizes the optimum type-II error exponent of a single sensor single decision center system given a maximum type-I error probability when communication is either over a noise-free rate-$R$ link or over a noisy discrete memoryless channel (DMC) with stop-feedback. Specifically, let $\epsilon$ denote the maximum allowed type-I error probability. Then the optimum exponent of the system with a rate-$R$ link under a constraint on the average communication load coincides with the optimum exponent of such a system with a rate $R/(1-\epsilon)$ link under a maximum communication load constraint. A strong converse thus does not hold under an average communication load constraint. A similar observation holds also for testing against independence over DMCs. With variable-length coding and stop-feedback and under an average communication load constraint, the optimum type-II error exponent over a DMC of capacity $C$ equals the optimum exponent under fixed-length coding and a maximum communication load constraint when communication is over a DMC of capacity $C(1-\epsilon)^{-1}$. In particular, under variable-length coding over a DMC with stop feedback a strong converse result does not hold and the optimum error exponent depends on the transition law of the DMC only through its capacity.

This paper studies the problem of discriminating two multivariate Gaussian distributions in a distributed manner. Specifically, it characterizes in a special case the optimal typeII error exponent as a function of the available communication rate. As a side-result, the paper also presents the optimal type-II error exponent of a slight generalization of the hypothesis testing against conditional independence problem where the marginal distributions under the two hypotheses can be different., Comment: To appear in 2020 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, ISIT'20

This paper characterizes the optimal type-II error exponent for a distributed hypothesis testing-against-independence problem when the \emph{expected} rate of the sensor-detector link is constrained. Unlike for the well-known Ahlswede-Csiszar result that holds under a \emph{maximum} rate constraint and where a strong converse holds, here the optimal exponent depends on the allowed type-I error exponent. Specifically, if the type-I error probability is limited by $\epsilon$, then the optimal type-II error exponent under an \emph{expected} rate constraint $R$ coincides with the optimal type-II error exponent under a \emph{maximum} rate constraint of $(1-\epsilon)R$.

This paper studies the capacity of a general multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) free-space optical intensity channel under a per-input-antenna peak-power constraint and a total average-power constraint over all input antennas. The focus is on the scenario with more transmit than receive antennas. In this scenario, different input vectors can yield identical distributions at the output, when they result in the same image vector under multiplication by the channel matrix. We first determine the most energy-efficient input vectors that attain each of these image vectors. Based on this, we derive an equivalent capacity expression in terms of the image vector, and establish new lower and upper bounds on the capacity of this channel. The bounds match when the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) tends to infinity, establishing the high-SNR asymptotic capacity. We also characterize the low-SNR slope of the capacity of this channel., Comment: original version submitted on 18 February 2019; revised version submitted on 20 January 2020

We consider a system consisting of a library of time-varying files, a server that at all times observes the current version of all files, and a cache that at the beginning stores the current versions of all files but afterwards has to update %fresh versions of these files from the server. Unlike previous works, the update duration is not constant but depends on the file and its Age of Information (AoI), i.e., of the time elapsed since it was last updated. The goal of this work is to design an update policy that minimizes the average AoI of all files with respect to a given popularity distribution. Actually a relaxed problem, close to the original optimization problem, is solved and a practical update policy is derived. The update policy relies on the file popularity and on the functions that characterize the update durations of the files depending on their AoI. Numerical simulations show a significant improvement of this new update policy compared to the so-called square-root policy that is optimal under file-independent and constant update durations., Comment: To be submitted to ICC 2020

A single-sensor two-detectors system is considered where the sensor communicates with both detectors and Detector 1 communicates with Detector 2, all over noise-free rate-limited links. The sensor and both detectors observe discrete memoryless source sequences whose joint probability mass function depends on a binary hypothesis. The goal at each detector is to guess the binary hypothesis in a way that, for increasing observation lengths, the probability of error under one of the hypotheses decays to zero with largest possible exponential decay, whereas the probability of error under the other hypothesis can decay to zero arbitrarily slow. For the setting with zero-rate communication on both links, we exactly characterize the set of possible exponents and the gain brought up by cooperation, in function of the number of bits that are sent over the two links. Notice that, for this setting, tradeoffs between the exponents achieved at the two detectors arise only in few particular cases. In all other cases, each detector achieves the same performance as if it were the only detector in the system. For the setting with positive communication rates from the sensor to the detectors, we characterize the set of all possible exponents in a special case of testing against independence. In this case the cooperation link allows Detector~2 to increase its Type-II error exponent by an amount that is equal to the exponent attained at Detector 1. We also provide a general inner bound on the set of achievable error exponents. For most cases it shows a tradeoff between the two exponents., Comment: submitted to IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, 30 pages, 5 figures

The sectorized hexagonal model with mixed delay constraints is considered when both neighbouring mobile users and base stations can cooperate over rate-limited links. Each message is a combination of independent "fast" and "slow" bits, where the former are subject to a stringent delay constraint and cannot profit from cooperation. Inner and outer bounds on the multiplexing gain region are derived. The obtained results show that for small cooperation prelogs or moderate "fast" multiplexing gains, the overall performance (sum multiplexing gain) is hardly decreased by the stringent delay constraints on the "fast" bits. For large cooperation prelogs and large "fast" multiplexing gains, increasing the "fast" multiplexing gain by $\Delta$ comes at the expense of decreasing the sum multiplexing gain by $3 \Delta$.

Placement delivery arrays for distributed computing (Comp-PDAs) have recently been proposed as a framework to construct universal computing schemes for MapReduce-like systems. In this work, we extend this concept to systems with straggling nodes, i.e., to systems where a subset of the nodes cannot accomplish the assigned map computations in due time. Unlike most previous works that focused on computing linear functions, our results are universal and apply for arbitrary map and reduce functions. Our contributions are as follows. Firstly, we show how to construct a universal coded computing scheme for MapReduce-like systems with straggling nodes from any given Comp-PDA. We also characterize the storage and communication loads of the resulting scheme in terms of the Comp-PDA parameters. Then, we prove an information-theoretic converse bound on the storage-communication (SC) tradeoff achieved by universal computing schemes with straggling nodes. We show that the information-theoretic bound matches the performance achieved by the coded computing schemes with straggling nodes corresponding to the Maddah-Ali and Niesen (MAN) PDAs, i.e., to the Comp-PDAs describing Maddah-Ali and Niesen's coded caching scheme. Interestingly, the same Comp-PDAs (the MAN-PDAs) are optimal for any number of straggling nodes, which implies that the map phase of optimal coded computing schemes does not need to be adapted to the number of stragglers in the system. We finally prove that while the points that lie exactly on the fundamental SC tradeoff cannot be achieved with Comp-PDAs that require smaller number of files than the MAN-PDAs, this is possible for some of the points that lie close to the SC tradeoff. For these latter points, the decrease in the requested number of files can be exponential in the number of nodes of the system., Comment: 29 pages, 3 figure, part of the work has been published in ISIT 2019

A detection system with a single sensor and two detectors is considered, where each of the terminals observes a memoryless source sequence, the sensor sends a message to both detectors and the first detector sends a message to the second detector. Communication of these messages is assumed to be error-free but rate-limited. The joint probability mass function (pmf) of the source sequences observed at the three terminals depends on an $\mathsf{M}$-ary hypothesis $(\mathsf{M} \geq 2)$, and the goal of the communication is that each detector can guess the underlying hypothesis. Detector $k$, $k=1,2$, aims to maximize the error exponent \textit{under hypothesis} $i_k$, $i_k \in \{1,\ldots,\mathsf{M}\}$, while ensuring a small probability of error under all other hypotheses. We study this problem in the case in which the detectors aim to maximize their error exponents under the \textit{same} hypothesis (i.e., $i_1=i_2$) and in the case in which they aim to maximize their error exponents under \textit{distinct} hypotheses (i.e., $i_1 \neq i_2$). For the setting in which $i_1=i_2$, we present an achievable exponents region for the case of positive communication rates, and show that it is optimal for a specific case of testing against independence. We also characterize the optimal exponents region in the case of zero communication rates. For the setting in which $i_1 \neq i_2$, we characterize the optimal exponents region in the case of zero communication rates., Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure to be published in 56th Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing (Allerton)

We consider a MapReduce-like distributed computing system. We derive a lower bound on the communication cost for any given storage and computation costs. This lower bound matches the achievable bound we proposed recently. As a result, we completely characterize the optimal tradeoff between the storage, the computation, and the communication. Our result generalizes the previous one by Li et al. to also account for the number of computed intermediate values., Comment: 1 figure, has been published in 2018 IEEE Information Theory Workshop (ITW)

Coding and testing schemes for binary hypothesis testing over noisy networks are proposed and their corresponding type-II error exponents are derived. When communication is over a discrete memoryless channel (DMC), our scheme combines Shimokawa-Han-Amari's hypothesis testing scheme with Borade's unequal error protection (UEP) for channel coding. A separate source channel coding architecture is employed. The resulting exponent is optimal for the newly introduced class of \emph{generalized testing against conditional independence}. When communication is over a MAC or a BC, our scheme combines hybrid coding with UEP. The resulting error exponent over the MAC is optimal in the case of generalized testing against conditional independence with independent observations at the two sensors, when the MAC decomposes into two individual DMCs. In this case, separate source-channel coding is sufficient; this same conclusion holds also under arbitrarily correlated sensor observations when testing is against independence. For the BC, the error exponents region of hybrid coding with UEP exhibits a tradeoff between the exponents attained at the two decision centers. When both receivers aim at maximizing the error exponents under different hypotheses and the marginal distributions of the sensors' observations are different under these hypotheses, then this tradeoff can be mitigated with the following strategy. The sensor makes a tentative guess on the hypothesis, submits this guess, and applies our coding and testing scheme for the DMC only for the decision center that is not interested in maximizing the exponent under the guessed hypothesis.

This paper investigates distributed computing systems where computations are split into "Map" and "Reduce" functions. A new coded scheme, called distributed computing and coded communication (D3C), is proposed, and its communication load is analyzed as a function of the available storage space and the number of intermediate values (IVA) to be computed. D3C achieves the smallest possible communication load for a given storage space, while a smaller number of IVAs need to be computed compared to Li et al.'s coded distributed computing (CDC) scheme. More generally, our scheme can flexibly trade between storage space and the number of IVAs to be computed. Communication load is then analyzed for any given tradeoff., Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures

Coded-caching delivery is considered over a symmetric noisy broadcast channel whose state is unknown at the transmitter during the cache placement phase. In particular, the delivery phase is modeled by a state-dependent broadcast channel where the state remains constant over each transmission block and is learned by the transmitter (and the receivers) only at the beginning of each block. A state-adaptive coded caching scheme is proposed that improves either on rate or decoding latency over two baseline schemes that are based on standard coded caching., Comment: The paper has appeared at the 52nd Annual Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers

Wyner's soft-handoff network with mixed delay constraints is considered when neighbouring receivers can cooperate over rate-limited links. Each source message is a combination of independent "fast" and "slow" bits, where the former are subject to a stringent decoding delay. Inner and outer bounds on the capacity region are derived, and the multiplexing gain region is characterized when only transmitters or only receivers cooperate.

A major practical limitation of the Maddah-Ali-Niesen coded caching techniques is their high subpacketization level. For the simple network with a single server and multiple users, Yan \emph{et al.} proposed an alternative scheme with the so-called placement delivery arrays (PDA). Such a scheme requires slightly higher transmission rates but significantly reduces the subpacketization level. In this paper, we extend the PDA framework and propose three low-subpacketization schemes for combination networks, i.e., networks with a single server, multiple relays, and multiple cache-aided users that are connected to subsets of relays. One of the schemes achieves the cutset lower bound on the link rate when the cache memories are sufficiently large. Our other two schemes apply only to \emph{resolvable} combination networks. For these networks and for a wide range of cache sizes, the new schemes perform closely to the coded caching schemes that directly apply Maddah-Ali-Niesen scheme while having significantly reduced subpacketization levels., Comment: 5 pages, has been published at IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT), Jun. 2018, Colorado, USA

This paper derives upper and lower bounds on the secrecy capacity-memory tradeoff of a wiretap erasure broadcast channel (BC) with Kw weak receivers and Ks strong receivers, where weak receivers, respectively strong receivers, have same erasure probabilities and cache sizes. The lower bounds are achieved by schemes that meticulously combine joint cache-channel coding with wiretap coding and key-aided one-time pads. The presented upper bound holds more generally for arbitrary degraded BCs and arbitrary cache sizes. When only weak receivers have cache memories, upper and lower bounds coincide for small and large cache memories, thus providing the exact secrecy capacity-memory tradeoff for this setup. The derived bounds allow to further conclude that the secrecy capacity is positive even when the eavesdropper is stronger than all the legitimate receivers with cache memories. Moreover, they show that the secrecy capacity-memory tradeoff can be significantly smaller than its non-secure counterpart, but it grows much faster when cache memories are small. The paper also presents a lower bound on the global secrecy capacity-memory tradeoff where one is allowed to optimize the cache assignment subject to a total cache budget. It is close to the best known lower bound without secrecy constraint. For small total cache budget, the global secrecy capacity-memory tradeoff is achieved by assigning all the available cache memory uniformly over all receivers if the eavesdropper is stronger than all legitimate receivers, and it is achieved by assigning the cache memory uniformly only over the weak receivers if the eavesdropper is weaker than the strong receivers.

This paper derives upper and lower bounds on the capacity of the multiple-input single-output free-space optical intensity channel with signal-independent additive Gaussian noise subject to both an average-intensity and a peak-intensity constraint. In the limit where the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) tends to infinity, the asymptotic capacity is specified, while in the limit where the SNR tends to zero, the exact slope of the capacity is also given., Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Information Theory

Coding and testing schemes and the corresponding achievable type-II error exponents are presented for binary hypothesis testing over two-hop relay networks. The schemes are based on cascade source coding techniques and {unanimous decision-forwarding}, the latter meaning that a terminal decides on the null hypothesis only if all previous terminals have decided on the null hypothesis. If the observations at the transmitter, the relay, and the receiver form a Markov chain in this order, then, without loss in performance, the proposed cascade source code can be replaced by two independent point-to-point source codes, one for each hop. The decoupled scheme (combined with decision-forwarding) is shown to attain the optimal type-II error exponents for various instances of "testing against conditional independence." The same decoupling is shown to be optimal also for some instances of "testing against independence," when the observations at the transmitter, the receiver, and the relay form a Markov chain in this order, and when the relay-to-receiver link is of sufficiently high rate. For completeness, the paper also presents an analysis of the Shimokawa-Han-Amari binning scheme for the point-to-point hypothesis testing setup.

A distributed binary hypothesis testing problem is studied with one observer and two decision centers. Achievable type-II error exponents are derived for testing against conditional independence when the observer communicates with the two decision centers over one common and two individual noise-free bit pipes and when it communicates with them over a noisy broadcast channel (BC). The results are based on a coding and testing scheme that splits the observations into subblocks, so that transmitter and receivers can independently apply to each subblock either Gray-Wyner coordination coding with side-information or hybrid joint source-channel coding with side-information, followed by a Neyman-Pearson test over the subblocks at the receivers. This approach allows to avoid introducing further error exponents that one would expect from the receivers' decoding operations related to binning or the noisy transmission channel. The derived exponents are shown to be optimal in some special cases when communication is over noise-free links. The results reveal a tradeoff between the type-II error exponents at the two decision centers.

Degraded K-user broadcast channels (BC) are studied when receivers are facilitated with cache memories. Lower and upper bounds are derived on the capacity-memory tradeoff, i.e., on the largest rate of reliable communication over the BC as a function of the receivers' cache sizes, and the bounds are shown to match for some special cases. The lower bounds are achieved by two new coding schemes that benefit from non-uniform cache assignment. Lower and upper bounds are also established on the global capacity-memory tradeoff, i.e., on the largest capacity-memory tradeoff that can be attained by optimizing the receivers' cache sizes subject to a total cache memory budget. The bounds coincide when the total cache memory budget is sufficiently small or sufficiently large, characterized in terms of the BC statistics. For small cache memories, it is optimal to assign all the cache memory to the weakest receiver. In this regime, the global capacity-memory tradeoff grows as the total cache memory budget divided by the number of files in the system. In other words, a perfect global caching gain is achievable in this regime and the performance corresponds to a system where all cache contents in the network are available to all receivers. For large cache memories, it is optimal to assign a positive cache memory to every receiver such that the weaker receivers are assigned larger cache memories compared to the stronger receivers. In this regime, the growth rate of the global capacity-memory tradeoff is further divided by the number of users, which corresponds to a local caching gain. Numerical indicate suggest that a uniform cache-assignment of the total cache memory is suboptimal in all regimes unless the BC is completely symmetric. For erasure BCs, this claim is proved analytically in the regime of small cache-sizes., Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Information Theory