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Gabidulin codes are the first general construction of linear codes that are maximum rank distant (MRD). They have found applications in linear network coding, for example, when the transmitter and receiver are oblivious to the inner workings and topology of the network (the so-called incoherent regime). The reason is that Gabidulin codes can be used to map information to linear subspaces, which in the absence of errors cannot be altered by linear operations, and in the presence of errors can be corrected if the subspace is perturbed by a small rank. Furthermore, in distributed coding and distributed systems, one is led to the design of error correcting codes whose generator matrix must satisfy a given support constraint. In this paper, we give necessary and sufficient conditions on the support of the generator matrix that guarantees the existence of Gabidulin codes and general MRD codes. When the rate of the code is not very high, this is achieved with the same field size necessary for Gabidulin codes with no support constraint. When these conditions are not satisfied, we characterize the largest possible rank distance under the support constraints and show that they can be achieved by subcodes of Gabidulin codes. The necessary and sufficient conditions are identical to those that appear for MDS codes which were recently proven by Yildiz et al. and Lovett in the context of settling the GM-MDS conjecture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on recent development by Padakandla and Pradhan, and by Lim, Feng, Pastore, Nazer, and Gastpar, this paper studies the potential of structured coset coding as a complete replacement for random coding in network information theory. The roles of two techniques used in coset coding to generate nonuniform codewords, namely, shaping and channel transformation, are clarified and illustrated via the simple example of the two-sender multiple access channel. While individually deficient, the optimal combination of shaping via nested coset codes of the same generator matrix (which we refer to as homologous codes) and channel transformation is shown to achieve the same performance as traditional random codes for the general two-sender multiple access channel. The achievability proof of the capacity region is extended to multiple access channels with more than two senders, and with one or more receivers. A quantization argument adapted to the proposed combination of two techniques is presented to establish the achievability proof for their Gaussian counterparts. It is illustrated by an example that combining shaping and channel transformation is useful even when the goal of transmission for a subset of the receivers is to recover a linear combination of messages. These results open up new possibilities of utilizing homologous codes for a broader class of applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the problem of tracking, in realtime, an unstable autoregressive (AR) source over a discrete memoryless channel (DMC). We present computable achievable bounds on the optimal tracking error for general DMCs, and we particularize these bounds to the binary erasure, packet erasure, and binary symmetric channels. The achievable bounds in this paper are proved using a partially separate source quantization and channel coding architecture. We do not use complete or strict separation in usual Shannon sense: 1) the quantiser’s resolution is optimized against the error-correction capabilities of the channel code and the channel code is optimized against an AR Hamming distortion function matched to the source (a weighted Hamming distortion function that provides unequal error protection to different parts of the AR source). The achievability results for general DMCs are proved by combining the AR Hamming distortion function with new realtime (streaming) versions of the random coding union and dependence testing bounds. When applied to erasure channels, these general bounds combine with simple converses to demonstrate that the channel’s cutoff rate plays an important role in realtime tracking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quantum reading refers to the task of reading out classical information stored in a read-only memory device. In any such protocol, the transmitter and receiver are in the same physical location, and the goal of such a protocol is to use these devices (modeled by independent quantum channels), coupled with a quantum strategy, to read out as much information as possible from a memory device, such as a CD or DVD. As a consequence of the physical setup of quantum reading, the most natural and general definition for quantum reading capacity should allow for an adaptive operation after each call to the channel, and this is how we define quantum reading capacity in this paper. We also establish several bounds on quantum reading capacity, and we introduce an environment-parameterized memory cell with associated environment states, delivering second-order and strong converse bounds for its quantum reading capacity. We calculate the quantum reading capacities for some exemplary memory cells, including a thermal memory cell, a qudit erasure memory cell, and a qudit depolarizing memory cell. We finally provide an explicit example to illustrate the advantage of using an adaptive strategy in the context of zero-error quantum reading capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the problem of function computation with privacy and secrecy constraints is considered. The considered model consists of three legitimate nodes (i.e., two transmitters, Alice and Bob, and a fusion center that acts as the receiver) that observe correlated sources and are connected by noiseless public channels, and an eavesdropper Eve who has full access to the public channels and also has its own source observations. The fusion center would like to compute a function of the distributed sources within a prefixed distortion level under a certain distortion metric. To facilitate the function computation, Alice and Bob will send messages to the fusion center. Different from the existing setups in function computation, we assume that there is a privacy constraint on the sources at Alice and Bob. In particular, Alice and Bob would like to enable the fusion center to compute the function, but at same time, they do not want the fusion center to learn too much information about the source observations. We introduce a quantity to precisely measure the privacy leakage to the fusion center. In addition to this privacy constraint, we also have a secrecy constraint to Eve and use equivocation of sources to measure this quantity. Under this model, we study the tradeoffs among message rates, private information leakage, equivocation, and distortion. We first consider a scenario that has only one transmitter, i.e., the source at Bob is empty, and fully single-letter characterize the corresponding regions. Then, we consider the more general case and provide both outer and inner bounds on the corresponding regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the finite-order autoregressive moving average (ARMA) Gaussian wiretap channel with noiseless causal feedback is considered, in which an eavesdropper receives noisy observations of signals in both forward and feedback channels. It is shown that the generalized Schalkwijk–Kailath scheme, a capacity-achieving coding scheme for the Gaussian feedback channel, achieves the same maximum rate for the same channel even with the presence of an eavesdropper. Therefore, the secrecy capacity is equal to the feedback capacity without the presence of an eavesdropper for the Gaussian feedback channel. Furthermore, the results are extended to the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel with quantized feedback. It is shown that the proposed coding scheme achieves a positive secrecy rate. Our result implies that as the amplitude of the quantization noise decreases to zero, the secrecy rate converges to the capacity of the AWGN channel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In fog-aided cellular systems, content delivery latency can be minimized by jointly optimizing edge caching and transmission strategies. In order to account for the cache capacity limitations at the edge nodes (ENs), transmission generally involves both fronthaul transfer from a cloud processor with access to the content library to the ENs and wireless delivery from the ENs to the users. In this paper, the resulting problem is studied from an information-theoretic viewpoint by making the following practically relevant assumptions: 1) the ENs have multiple antennas; 2) only uncoded fractional caching is allowed; 3) the fronthaul links are used to send fractions of contents; and 4) the ENs are constrained to use one-shot linear zero-forcing precoding on the wireless channel. Assuming off-line proactive caching and focusing on a high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) latency metric, the optimal information-theoretic performance is investigated under both serial and pipelined fronthaul-edge transmission modes. The analysis characterizes the minimum high-SNR latency in terms of normalized delivery time (NDT) for worst case users’ demands. The characterization is exact for a subset of system parameters and is generally optimal within a multiplicative factor of 3/2 for the serial case and 2 for the pipelined case. The results bring insights into the optimal interplay between edge and cloud processing in fog-aided wireless networks as a function of system resources, including the number of antennas at the ENs, the ENs’ cache capacity, and the fronthaul capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guessing games for directed graphs were introduced by Riis for studying multiple unicast network coding problems. In a guessing game, the players toss generalised dice and can see some of the other outcomes depending on the structure of an underlying digraph. They later guess simultaneously the outcome of their own die. Their objective is to find a strategy, which maximizes the probability that they all guess correctly. The performance of the optimal strategy for a graph is measured by the guessing number of the digraph. Christofides and Markström studied guessing numbers of undirected graphs and defined a strategy which they conjectured to be optimal. One of the main results of this paper is a disproof of this conjecture. The main tool so far for computing guessing numbers of graphs is information theoretic inequalities. The other main result of this paper is that Shannon’s information inequalities, which work particularly well for a wide range of graph classes, are not sufficient for computing the guessing number. Finally, we pose a few more interesting questions some of which we can answer and some which we leave as open problems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper studies the noncausal relay channel, also known as the relay channel with unlimited look ahead, introduced by by El Gamal, Hassanpour, and Mammen. Unlike the standard relay channel model, where the relay encodes its signal based on the previous received output symbols, the relay in the noncausal relay channel encodes its signal as a function of the entire received sequence. In the existing coding schemes, the relay uses this noncausal information solely to recover the transmitted message or part of it and then cooperates with the sender to communicate this message to the receiver. However, it is shown in this paper that by applying the Gelfand–Pinsker coding scheme, the relay can take further advantage of the noncausally available information and achieve rates strictly higher than those of the existing coding schemes. This paper also provides a new upper bound on the capacity of the noncausal relay channel that strictly improves upon the existing cutset bound. These new lower and upper bounds on the capacity coincide for the class of degraded noncausal relay channels and establish the capacity for this class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Index coding is a source coding problem in which a broadcaster seeks to meet the different demands of several users, each of whom is assumed to have some prior information on the data held by the sender. A well-known application is satellite communications, as described in one of the earliest papers on the subject (Birk and Kol, 1998). It is readily seen that if the sender has knowledge of its clients’ requests and their side-information sets, then the number of packet transmissions required to satisfy all users’ demands can be greatly reduced if the data are encoded before sending. The collection of side-information indices as well as the indices of the requested data is described as an instance \mathcal I of the index coding with side-information (ICSI) problem. The encoding function is called the index code of $ \mathcal I$ , and the number of transmissions, resulting from the encoding is referred to as its length. The main ICSI problem is to determine the optimal length of an index code and instance $ \mathcal I$ . As this number is hard to compute, bounds approximating it are sought, as are algorithms to compute efficient index codes. These questions have been addressed by several authors (e.g., see Alon et al. 2008, Bar-Yossef et al. 2011, Blasiak et al. 2013), often taking a graph-theoretic approach. Two interesting generalizations of the problem that have appeared in the literature are the subject of this paper. The first of these is the case of index coding with coded side information (Dai et al. 2014), in which linear combinations of the source data are both requested by and held as users’ side-information. This generalization has applications, for example, to relay channels and necessitates algebraic rather than combinatorial methods. The second is the introduction of error-correction in the problem, in which the broadcast channel is subject to noise (Dau et al. 2013). In this paper, we characterize the optimal length of a scalar or vector linear index code with coded side information (ICCSI) over a finite field in terms of a generalized min-rank and give bounds on this number based on constructions of random codes for an arbitrary instance. We furthermore consider the length of an optimal $\delta $ -error correcting code for an instance of the ICCSI problem and obtain bounds analogous to those described in (Dau et al. 2013), both for the Hamming metric and for rank-metric errors. We describe decoding algorithms for both categories of errors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Classical multiuser information theory studies the fundamental limits of models with a fixed (often small) number of users as the coding blocklength goes to infinity. This paper proposes a new paradigm, referred to as many-user information theory, where the number of users is allowed to grow with the blocklength. This paradigm is motivated by emerging systems with a massive number of users in an area, such as the Internet of Things. The focus of this paper is the many-access channel model, which consists of a single receiver and many transmitters, whose number increases unboundedly with the blocklength. Moreover, an unknown subset of transmitters may transmit in a given block and need to be identified as well as decoded by the receiver. A new notion of capacity is introduced and characterized for the Gaussian many-access channel with random user activities. The capacity can be achieved by first detecting the set of active users and then decoding their messages. The minimum cost of identifying the active users is also quantified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study linear encoding for a pair of correlated Gaussian sources transmitted over a two-user Gaussian broadcast channel in the presence of unit-delay noiseless feedback, abbreviated as the GBCF. Each pair of source samples is transmitted using a linear transmission scheme in a finite number of channel uses. We investigate three linear transmission schemes: A scheme based on the Ozarow–Leung (OL) code, a scheme based on the linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG) code of Ardestanizadeh et al., and a novel scheme derived in this paper using a dynamic programming (DP) approach. For the OL and LQG schemes we present lower and upper bounds on the minimal number of channel uses needed to achieve a target mean-square error (MSE) pair. For the LQG scheme in the symmetric setting, we identify the optimal scaling of the sources, which results in a significant improvement of its finite horizon performance, and, in addition, characterize the (exact) minimal number of channel uses required to achieve a target MSE. Finally, for the symmetric setting, we show that for any fixed and finite number of channel uses, the DP scheme achieves an MSE lower than the MSE achieved by either the LQG or the OL schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on the recent coded-caching breakthrough by Maddah-Ali and Niesen, the work here considers the $K$ -user cache-aided wireless multi-antenna symmetric broadcast channel with random fading and imperfect feedback, and analyzes the throughput performance as a function of feedback statistics and cache size. In this setting, this paper identifies the optimal cache-aided degrees-of-freedom (DoF) within a factor of 4, by identifying near-optimal schemes that exploit a new synergy between coded caching and delayed CSIT, as well as by exploiting the unexplored interplay between caching and feedback-quality. The DoF expressions reveal an initial gain due to current CSIT, and an additional gain due to coded caching, which is exponential in the sense that any linear decrease in the required DoF performance, allows for an exponential reduction in the required cache size. In the end, this paper reveals three new aspects of caching: a synergy between memory and delayed feedback, a tradeoff between memory and current CSIT, and a powerful ability to provide cache-aided feedback savings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Transmissions across asynchronous communication channels are subject to delay injection attacks, which can cause an arbitrary number of skews. That is, such attacks can cause an arbitrary number of transmitted signals to arrive after the first signal of the next transmission has arrived. The (common) assumption that despite the delays, all signals from the $i$ th transmission arrive at the decoder before any signal from the (i+2){\text{nd}} transmission arrives is called a no switch assumption. This paper presents a self-synchronizing, zero-latency, zero-error coding scheme that requires no acknowledge and can decode transmissions distorted by an arbitrary number of skews that obey this no switch assumption. The rate associated with the coding scheme provides a lower bound of 0.6942 for the (zero-error) capacity of such a channel. It is further shown that zero-error channel capacity of the channel is upper bounded by 0.7248. Finally, this paper presents bounds on the (zero-error) capacity of a channel for which the number of transmissions that can mix with one another is large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about deriving lower bounds on the error exponents for the two-user interference channel under the random coding regime for several ensembles. Specifically, we first analyze the standard random coding ensemble, where the codebooks are comprised of independently and identically distributed (i.i.d.) codewords. For this ensemble, we focus on optimum decoding, which is in contrast to other, suboptimal decoding rules that have been used in the literature (e.g., joint typicality decoding, treating interference as noise, and so on). The fact that the interfering signal is a codeword, rather than an i.i.d. noise process, complicates the application of conventional techniques of performance analysis of the optimum decoder. In addition, unfortunately, these conventional techniques result in loose bounds. Using analytical tools rooted in statistical physics, as well as advanced union bounds, we derive single-letter formulas for the random coding error exponents. We compare our results with the best known lower bound on the error exponent, and show that our exponents can be strictly better. Then, in the second part of this paper, we consider more complicated coding ensembles and find a lower bound on the error exponent associated with the celebrated Han–Kobayashi random coding ensemble, which is based on superposition coding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consider a multi-user multi-carrier communication system where multiple users share multiple discrete subcarriers. To achieve high spectrum efficiency, the users in the system must choose their transmit power dynamically in response to fast channel fluctuations. Assuming perfect channel state information, two formulations for the spectrum management (power control) problem are considered in this paper: the first is to minimize the total transmission power subject to all users’ transmission data rate constraints, and the second is to maximize the min-rate utility subject to individual power constraints at each user. It is known in the literature that both formulations of the problem are polynomial time solvable when the number of subcarriers is one and strongly NP-hard when the number of subcarriers are greater than or equal to three. However, the complexity characterization of the problem when the number of subcarriers is two has been missing for a long time. This paper answers this long-standing open question: both formulations of the problem are strongly NP-hard when the number of subcarriers is two. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The degrees of freedom (DoFs) of the $K$ -user multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) interference channel are studied when perfect, but delayed channel state information is available at the transmitter side (delayed CSIT). Recent works have proposed schemes improving the DoF knowledge of the interference channel, but at the cost of developing transmission involving many channel uses (long delay), thus increasing the complexity at both transmitter and receiver side. This paper proposes three linear precoding strategies, limited to at most three phases, based on the concept of interference alignment, and built upon three main ingredients: delayed CSIT precoding, user scheduling, and redundancy transmission. In this respect, the interference alignment is realized by exploiting delayed CSIT to align the interference at the non-intended receivers along the space-time domain. Moreover, a new framework is proposed where the number of transmitted symbols and duration of the phases is obtained as the solution of a maximization problem, and enabling the introduction of complexity constraints, which allows deriving the achievable DoF as a function of the transmission delay, i.e., the achievable DoF-delay trade-off. Finally, the latter part of this paper settles that the assumption of time-varying channels common along all the literature on delayed CSIT is indeed unnecessary. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An open problem in polarization theory is to determine the binary operations that always lead to polarization (in the general multilevel sense) when they are used in Arıkan style constructions. This paper, which is presented in two parts, solves this problem by providing a necessary and sufficient condition for a binary operation to be polarizing. This (first) part of this paper introduces the mathematical framework that we will use in the second part to characterize the polarizing operations. We define uniformity preserving, irreducible, ergodic, and strongly ergodic operations, and we study their properties. The concepts of a stable partition and the residue of a stable partition are introduced. We show that an ergodic operation is strongly ergodic if and only if all its stable partitions are their own residues. We also study the products of binary operations and the structure of their stable partitions. We show that the product of a sequence of binary operations is strongly ergodic if and only if all the operations in the sequence are strongly ergodic. In the second part of this paper, we provide a foundation of polarization theory based on the ergodic theory of binary operations that we develop in this part. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper investigates the minimum energy required to transmit k information bits with a given reliability over a multiple-antenna Rayleigh block-fading channel, with and without channel state information (CSI) at the receiver. No feedback is assumed. It is well known that the ratio between the minimum energy per bit and the noise level converges to −1.59 dB as k goes to infinity, regardless of whether CSI is available at the receiver or not. This paper shows that the lack of CSI at the receiver causes a slowdown in the speed of convergence to −1.59 dB as k\to \infty compared with the case of perfect receiver CSI. Specifically, we show that, in the no-CSI case, the gap to −1.59 dB is proportional to , whereas when perfect CSI is available at the receiver, this gap is proportional to 1/\sqrt {k} . In both cases, the gap to −1.59 dB is independent of the number of transmit antennas and of the channel’s coherence time. Numerically, we observe that, when the receiver is equipped with a single antenna, to achieve an energy per bit of −1.5 dB in the no-CSI case, one needs to transmit at least 7\times 10^{7}$ information bits, whereas 6\times 10^{4} bits suffice for the case of perfect CSI at the receiver. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper considers a state dependent broadcast channel with one transmitter, Alice, and two receivers, Bob and Eve. The problem is to effectively convey (“amplify”) the channel state sequence to Bob while “masking” it from Eve. The extent to which the state sequence cannot be masked from Eve is referred to as leakage. This can be viewed as a secrecy problem, where we desire that the channel state itself be minimally leaked to Eve while being communicated to Bob. This paper is aimed at characterizing the tradeoff region between amplification and leakage rates for such a system. An achievable coding scheme is presented, wherein the transmitter transmits a partial state information over the channel to facilitate the amplification process. For the case when Bob observes a stronger signal than Eve, the achievable coding scheme is enhanced with secure refinement. Outer bounds on the tradeoff region are also derived, and used in characterizing some special case results. In particular, the optimal amplification-leakage rate difference, called as differential amplification capacity, is characterized for the reversely degraded discrete memoryless channel, the degraded binary, and the degraded Gaussian channels. In addition, for the degraded Gaussian model, the extremal corner points of the tradeoff region are characterized, and the gap between the outer bound and achievable rate-regions is shown to be less than half a bit for a wide set of channel parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper studies the value of limited rate cooperation between the transmitters for managing interference and simultaneously ensuring secrecy, in the two-user Gaussian symmetric interference channel (IC). First, the problem is studied in the symmetric linear deterministic IC (SLDIC) setting, and achievable schemes are proposed, based on interference cancelation, relaying of the other user’s data bits, and transmission of random bits. In the proposed achievable scheme, the limited rate cooperative link is used to share a combination of data bits and random bits depending on the model parameters. Outer bounds on the secrecy rate are also derived, using a novel partitioning of the encoded messages and outputs depending on the relative strength of the signal and the interference. The partitioning helps to bound certain negative entropy terms, leading to a tractable outer bound. The inner and outer bounds are derived under all possible parameter settings. It is found that, for some parameter settings, the inner and outer bounds match, yielding the capacity of the SLDIC under transmitter cooperation and secrecy constraints. In some other scenarios, the achievable rate matches with the capacity region of the two-user SLDIC without secrecy constraints derived by Wang and Tse; thus, the proposed scheme offers secrecy for free, in these cases. Inspired by the achievable schemes and outer bounds in the deterministic case, achievable schemes and outer bounds are derived in the Gaussian case. The proposed achievable scheme for the Gaussian case is based on Marton’s coding scheme and stochastic encoding along with dummy message transmission. One of the key techniques used in the achievable scheme for both the models is interference cancelation, which simultaneously offers two seemingly conflicting benefits: it cancels interference and ensures secrecy. Many of the results derived in this paper extend to the asymmetric case also. The results show that limited transmitter cooperation can greatly facilitate secure communications over two-user ICs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the two-user causal cognitive interference channel (CCIC), where two transmitters aim to communicate independent messages to two different receivers via a common channel. One source, referred to as the cognitive, is capable of overhearing the other source, referred to as the primary, through a noisy in-band link and thus can assist in sending the primary’s data. The authors of this paper recently characterized to within a constant gap the capacity of the symmetric Gaussian CCIC in: 1) the strong interference regime and 2) for a subset of the weak interference regime when the cooperation link is larger than a given threshold. This paper characterizes to within a constant gap the capacity for the symmetric Gaussian CCIC in the regime that was still open. To this end, two novel outer bounds of the types 2 R\mathsf {p}+ R\mathsf {c} and R\mathsf {p}+2 R\mathsf {c} are derived for the class of injective semideterministic CCICs, where the noises at the different source-destination pairs are independent. These outer bounds, as well as an achievable rate region based on Gelfand-Pinsker binning, superposition coding, and simultaneous decoding at the receivers, are then specialized to the Gaussian noise case. It is shown that the novel outer bounds are necessary to characterize the capacity within a constant gap when the cooperation link is weaker than the direct links, that is, in this regime unilateral cooperation leaves some system resources underutilized. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Grassmannian codes are known to be useful in error correction for random network coding. Recently, they were used to prove that vector network codes outperform scalar linear network codes, on multicast networks, with respect to the alphabet size. The multicast networks which were used for this purpose are generalized combination networks. In both the scalar and the vector network coding solutions, the subspace distance is used as the distance measure for the codes which solve the network coding problem in the generalized combination networks. In this paper, we show that the subspace distance can be replaced with two other possible distance measures which generalize the subspace distance. These two distance measures are shown to be equivalent under an orthogonal transformation. It is proved that the Grassmannian codes with the new distance measures generalize the Grassmannian codes with the subspace distance and the subspace designs with the strength of the design. Furthermore, optimal Grassmannian codes with the new distance measures have minimal requirements for the network coding solutions of some generalized combination networks. The coding problems related to these two distance measures, especially with respect to network coding, are discussed. Finally, by using these new concepts, it is proved that the codes in the Hamming scheme form a subfamily of the Grassmannian codes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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, this paper also presents an analysis of the Shimokawa–Han–Amari binning scheme for the point-to-point hypothesis testing setup. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New capacity upper bounds are presented for the discrete-time Poisson channel with no dark current and an average-power constraint. These bounds are a consequence of techniques developed for the seemingly unrelated problem of upper bounding the capacity of binary deletion and repetition channels. Previously, the best known capacity upper bound in the regime where the average-power constraint does not approach zero was due to Martinez (JOSA B, 2007), which is re-derived as a special case of the framework developed in this paper. Furthermore, this framework is carefully instantiated in order to obtain a closed-form bound that improves the result of Martinez everywhere. Finally, capacity-achieving distributions for the discrete-time Poisson channel are studied under an average-power constraint and/or a peak-power constraint and arbitrary dark current. In particular, it is shown that the support of the capacity-achieving distribution under an average-power constraint must only be countably infinite. This settles a conjecture of Shamai (IEE Proceedings I, 1990) in the affirmative. Previously, it was only known that the support must be an unbounded set. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider a binary erasure channel (BEC) with an unknown erasure probability of ${\delta }$ at a transmitter. In addition, we consider that ${\delta }$ has a constant value in each transmission block and the transmitter knows the probability distribution of ${\delta }$. For this problem with the infinite block length, based on the distribution of the random variable ${\delta }$ , a multi-layer encoding strategy at the transmitter and a successive decoding strategy at the receiver are proposed. In our proposed scheme, based on the value of ${\delta }$ , the receiver can decode a part of transmitted data from different transmission layers. In order to have a comparison with other erasure correction codes, we generalize the result of the infinite block length to the finite block-length transmission. We show that considering the average transmission rate, our scheme has a better performance than the other erasure correction codes such as the Raptor and the MDS codes. We also analyze both the decoding complexity and bit error rate versus the erasure probability of the channel. Besides, by using a numerical comparison, we try to show that our proposed strategy outperforms other transmission strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protograph-based Raptor-like low-density parity-check codes (PBRL codes) are a family of easily encodable rate-compatible low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. PBRL codes have an excellent performance across all design rates. Quasi-cyclic (QC) PBRL code families permit high-speed decoder implementations. PBRL codes designed thus far, for both long and short block-lengths, have been based on optimizing the iterative decoding threshold of the protograph of the PBRL family at various design rates. This paper introduces a design method to obtain better QC PBRL code families at short block-lengths (of a few hundred bits) for low frame error rate (FER) requirements. We first select a protomatrix for the highest design rate. To add a new row to lower the rate, we keep all the previously obtained rows of the PBRL protomatrix fixed and select the new row that maximizes an upper bound on the minimum distance of any QC-LDPC code that can be obtained from the protomatrix. The new QC PBRL code families outperform the original PBRL codes at short block-lengths by providing a significantly better low-FER performance. The standard approach to computing the aforementioned upper bounds requires complexity that grows exponentially with the size of the protomatrix. However, we show that the structure of the PBRL protomatrix lets us obtain the upper bounds with complexity that grows only linearly with the size of the PBRL protomatrix. Using the complexity reduction results, we also establish an equivalence between the exhaustive search to design a new row for the PBRL protomatrix according to the new design method and an integer linear program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we design energy-efficient space constellations for multiuser multi-input single-output visible light communication broadcast systems with channel state information (CSI) at the receiver in the three scenarios: 1) with CSI at the transmitter (CSIT); 2) with statistical CSIT; and 3) without CSIT. By utilizing the cooperation of multiuser interference, optimal multidimensional additively uniquely decomposable constellation groups are designed to optimize the received worst case performance metrics of all users subject to two commonly used power constraints, i.e., average and peak optical power constraints. The resulting optimal designs are proved to be pulse amplitude modulated with an optimal beamformer, which can be efficiently attained by numerical search for Scenarios 1 and 2 and be given in a closed form for Scenario 3. One of the common significant advantages of these designs is the fast demodulation of the sum signal from a noisy received signal, since these optimal designs result in an equivalent ideal scalar AWGN channel. Comprehensive computer simulations demonstrate that our designs significantly outperform traditional zero-forcing, minimum mean square error, and time-division methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The capacity under strong asynchronism was recently shown to be essentially unaffected by the imposed decoding delay—the elapsed time between when information is available at the transmitter and when it is decoded—and the output sampling rate. This paper shows that, in contrast with capacity, the second-order term in the maximum rate expansion is sensitive to both parameters. When the receiver must locate the sent codeword exactly and therefore achieve minimum delay equal to the blocklength $n$ , the second-order term in the maximum rate expansion is of order $\Theta (1/\rho)$ for any sampling rate $\rho =O(1/\sqrt {n})$ (and $\rho =\omega (1/n)$ for otherwise reliable communication is impossible). Instead, if $\rho =\omega (1/\sqrt {n})$ , then the second-order term is the same as under full sampling and is given by a standard $\Theta (\sqrt {n})$ term. However, if the delay constraint is only slightly relaxed to $n(1+o(1))$ , then the above order transition (for $\rho =O(1/\sqrt {n})$ and $\rho =\omega (1/\sqrt {n})$) vanishes and the second-order term remains the same as under full sampling for any $\rho =\omega (1/n)$. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is a well-known fact that feedback does not increase the capacity of point-to-point memoryless channels, however, its effect in secure communications is not fully understood yet. In this paper, an achievable scheme for the wiretap channel with generalized feedback is presented. This scheme, which uses the feedback signal to generate a shared secret key between the legitimate users, encrypts the message to be sent at the bit level. New capacity results for a class of channels are provided, as well as some new insights into the secret key agreement problem. Moreover, this scheme recovers previously reported rate regions from the literature, and thus it can be seen as a generalization that unifies several results in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing polar coding schemes for the two-user interference channel follow the original idea of Han and Kobayashi, in which component messages are encoded independently and then mapped by some deterministic functions (i.e., homogeneous superposition coding). In this paper, we propose a new polar coding scheme for the interference channel based on the heterogeneous superposition coding approach of Chong, Motani, and Garg. We prove that fully joint decoding (the receivers simultaneously decode both senders’ common messages and the intended sender’s private message) in the Han–Kobayashi strategy can be simplified to two types of partial-joint decoding, which are friendly to polar coding with practical decoding algorithms. The proposed coding scheme requires less auxiliary random variables and no deterministic functions and can be efficiently constructed. Furthermore, we extend this result to interference networks and show that partial-joint decoding is a general method for designing heterogeneous superposition polar coding schemes in interference networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marton’s inner bound is the best known achievable rate region for a general two-receiver discrete memoryless broadcast channel. In this paper, we establish improved bounds on the cardinalities of the auxiliary random variables appearing in this inner bound to the true rate region. We combine a perturbation technique, along with a representation using concave envelopes of information-theoretic functions that involve the use of auxiliary random variables, to achieve this improvement. The new cardinality bounds lead to a proof that a randomized-time-division strategy achieves every rate triple in Marton’s region for binary input broadcast channels. This extends the result by Hajek and Pursley which showed that the Cover-van der Muelen region was exhausted by the randomized-time-division strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a new coding scheme and establish new bounds on the capacity region for the multi-sender unicast index-coding problem. We revisit existing partitioned distributed composite coding (DCC) proposed by Sadeghi et al. and identify its limitations in the implementation of multi-sender composite coding and in the strategy of sender partitioning. We then propose two new coding components to overcome these limitations and develop a multi-sender cooperative composite coding (CCC). We show that CCC can strictly improve upon partitioned DCC, and is the key to achieve optimality for a number of index-coding instances. The usefulness of CCC and its special cases is illuminated via non-trivial examples, and the capacity region is established for each example. Comparisons between CCC and other non-cooperative schemes in recent works are also provided to further demonstrate the advantage of CCC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider list decoding in the zero-rate regime for two cases—the binary alphabet and the spherical codes in Euclidean space. Specifically, we study the maximal $\tau \in [{0,1}]$ for which there exists an arrangement of $M$ balls of relative Hamming radius $\tau $ in the binary hypercube (of arbitrary dimension) with the property that no point of the latter is covered by $L$ or more of them. As $M\to \infty $ the maximal $\tau $ decreases to a well-known critical value $\tau _{L}$. In this paper, we prove several results on the rate of this convergence. For the binary case, we show that the rate is $\Theta (M^{-1})$ when $L$ is even, thus extending the classical results of Plotkin and Levenshtein for $L=2$. For $L=3$ , the rate is shown to be $\Theta (M^{-({2}/{3})})$. For the similar question about spherical codes, we prove the rate is $\Omega (M^{-1})$ and $O(M^{-({2L}/{L^{2}-L+2})})$. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In multi-user wireless packet networks, interference, typically modeled as packet collision, is the throughput bottleneck. Users become aware of the interference pattern via feedback and use this information for contention resolution and packet retransmission. Conventional random access protocols interrupt communication to resolve contention, which reduces network throughput and increases latency and power consumption. In this paper, we take a different approach, and we develop opportunistic random access protocols rather than pursuing conventional methods. We allow wireless nodes to communicate without interruption and to observe the interference pattern. We then use this interference pattern knowledge and channel statistics to counter the negative impact of interference. We prove the optimality of our protocols using an extremal rank-ratio inequality. An important part of our contributions is the integration of spatial correlation in our assumptions and results. We identify spatial correlation regimes in which inherently outdated feedback becomes as good as idealized instantaneous feedback and correlation regimes in which feedback does not provide any throughput gain. To better illustrate the results, and as an intermediate step, we characterize the capacity region of finite-field spatially correlated interference channels with delayed channel state information at the transmitters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compute-and-forward (CF) harnesses interference in wireless communications by exploiting structured coding. The key idea of CF is to compute integer combinations of code words from multiple source nodes, rather than to decode individual code words by treating others as noise. Compute-compress-and-forward (CCF) can further enhance the network performance by introducing compression operations at receivers. In this paper, we develop a more general compression framework, termed generalized CCF (GCCF), where the compression function involves the selection of message segments over finite fields. We show that GCCF achieves a broader compression rate region than CCF. We also compare our compression rate region with the fundamental Slepian–Wolf (SW) region. We show that GCCF is optimal in the sense of achieving the minimum total compression rate. We also establish the criteria under which GCCF achieves the SW region. In addition, we consider a two-hop relay network employing the GCCF scheme. We formulate a sum-rate maximization problem and develop an approximate algorithm to solve the problem. Numerical results are presented to demonstrate the performance superiority of GCCF over CCF and other schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper obtains the first degrees of freedom (DoFs) bound that is provably sensitive tonetworkcoherence time, i.e., coherence time in an interference network, where all channels experience the same coherence patterns. This is accomplished by a novel adaptation of the aligned image sets bound and settles various open problems noted previously by Naderi and Avestimehr and by Gouet al.For example, a necessary and sufficient condition is obtained for the optimality of 1/2 DoF per user in a partially connected interference network, where the channel state information at the receivers (CSIRs) is perfect, the channel state information at the transmitters (CSITs) is instantaneous but limited to finite precision, and the network coherence time is $T_{c}=1$. The surprising insight that emerges is that even with perfect CSIR and instantaneous finite precision CSIT, the network coherence time matters, i.e., it has a DoF impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we introduce the notion of plausible deniability in an information theoretic framework. We consider a scenario where an entity that eavesdrops through a broadcast channel summons one of the parties in a communication protocol to reveal their message (or signal vector). It is desirable that the summoned party has enough freedom to produce a fake output that is likely plausible given the eavesdropper’s observation. We examine three variants of this problem—message deniability, transmitter deniability, and receiver deniability. In the first setting, the message sender is summoned to produce the sent message. Similarly, in the second and third settings, the transmitter and the receiver are required to produce the transmitted codeword and the received vector, respectively. For each of these settings, we examine the maximum communication rate that allows a given minimum rate of plausible fake outputs. First, for the message deniability problem, we fully characterize the capacity region for general broadcast channels. Next, for the transmitter deniability problem, we give an achievable region for general broadcast channels by fully characterizing the set of rate pairs’ achievable using deterministic coding schemes. Finally, for the receiver deniability problem, we give an achievable rate region for physically degraded broadcast channels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ordering of communication channels was first introduced by Shannon. In this paper, we aim to find characterizations of two orderings: input-degradedness and the Shannon ordering. A channel $W$ is said to be input-degraded from another channel $W'$ if $W$ can be simulated from $W'$ by randomization at the input. We provide a necessary and sufficient condition for a channel to be input-degraded from another one. We show that any decoder that is good for $W$ is also good for $W'$. We provide two characterizations for input-degradedness, one of which is similar to the Blackwell-Sherman-Stein theorem. We show that $W'$ contains $W$ (in the Shannon ordering sense) if and only if $W$ is the skew-composition of $W'$ with a convex-product $n$ channel. This fact is used to derive a characterization of the Shannon ordering that is similar to the Blackwell-Sherman-Stein theorem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the following combinatorial version of the Slepian–Wolf coding scheme. Two isolated Senders are given binary strings $X$ and $Y$ , respectively; the length of each string is equal to $n$ , and the Hamming distance between the strings is at most $\alpha n$. The Senders compress their strings and communicate the results to the Receiver. Then, the Receiver must reconstruct both the strings $X$ and $Y$. The aim is to minimize the lengths of the transmitted messages. For an asymmetric variant of this problem (where one of the Senders transmits the input string to the Receiver without compression) with deterministic encoding, a nontrivial bound was found by Orlitsky and Viswanathany. In this paper, we prove a new lower bound for the schemes with syndrome coding, where at least one of the Senders uses linear encoding of the input string. For the combinatorial Slepian–Wolf problem with randomized encoding, the theoretical optimum of communication complexity was known earlier, even though effective protocols with optimal lengths of messages remained unknown. We close this gap and present a polynomial-time-randomized protocol that achieves the optimal communication complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the joint source-channel coding problem of sending a memoryless source over a memoryless broadcast channel. An inner bound and several outer bounds on the admissible distortion region are derived, which, respectively, generalize and unify several existing bounds. As a consequence, we also obtain an inner bound and an outer bound for the degraded broadcast channel case. When specialized to the Gaussian or binary source broadcast, the inner bound and outer bound not only recover the best known inner bound and outer bound in the literature but also generate some new results. Besides, we also extend the inner bound and outer bounds to the Wyner–Ziv source broadcast problem, i.e., source broadcast with side information available at decoders. Some new bounds are obtained when specialized to the Wyner–Ziv Gaussian and Wyner–Ziv binary cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Index coding studies multiterminal source-coding problems where a set of receivers are required to decode multiple (possibly different) messages from a common broadcast, and they each know some messages a priori. In this paper, at the receiver end, we consider a special setting where each receiver knows only one message a priori, and each message is known to only one receiver. At the broadcasting end, we consider a generalized setting where there could be multiple senders, and each sender knows a subset of the messages. The senders collaborate to transmit an index code. This paper looks at minimizing the number of total coded bits the senders are required to transmit. When there is only one sender, we propose a pruning algorithm to find a lower bound on the optimal (i.e., the shortest) index codelength, and show that it is achievable by linear index codes. When there are two or more senders, we propose an appending technique to be used in conjunction with the pruning technique to give a lower bound on the optimal index codelength; we also derive an upper bound based on cyclic codes. While the two bounds do not match in general, for the special case where no two distinct senders know any message in common, the bounds match, giving the optimal index codelength. The results are expressed in terms of strongly connected components in directed graphs that represent the index-coding problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows that for the two-user Gaussian interference channel (G-IC) treating interference as noise without time sharing (TINnoTS) achieves the closure of the capacity region to within either a constant gap, or to within a gap of the order O(\log (\ln (\min ( \mathsf S, \mathsf I))/\gamma )) up to a set of Lebesgue measure \gamma \in (0,1] , where {\mathsf {S}} is the largest signal to noise ratio on the direct links and {\mathsf {I}}$ is the largest interference to noise ratio on the cross links. As a consequence, TINnoTS is optimal from a generalized degrees of freedom (gDoF) perspective for all channel gains except for a subset of zero measure. TINnoTS with Gaussian inputs is known to be optimal within 1/2 bit for a subset of the weak interference regime. Rather surprisingly, this paper shows that TINnoTS is gDoF optimal in all parameter regimes, even in the strong and very strong interference regimes where joint decoding of Gaussian inputs is optimal. For approximate optimality of TINnoTS in all parameter regimes, it is critical to use non-Gaussian inputs. This paper thus proposes to use mixed inputs as channel inputs for the G-IC, where a mixed input is the sum of a discrete and a Gaussian random variable. Interestingly, with reference to the Han–Kobayashi achievable scheme, the discrete part of a mixed input is shown to effectively behave as a common message in the sense that, although treated as noise, its effect on the achievable rate region is as if it were jointly decoded together with the desired messages at a non-intended receiver. The practical implication is that a discrete interfering input is a friend, while an Gaussian interfering input is in general a foe. This paper also discusses other practical implications of the proposed TINnoTS scheme with mixed inputs. Since TINnoTS requires neither explicit joint decoding nor time sharing, the results of this paper are applicable to a variety of oblivious or asynchronous channels, such as the block asynchronous G-IC (which is not an information stable channel) and the G-IC with partial codebook knowledge at one or more receivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an outage analysis for a two-user parallel Gaussian interference channel consisting of two sub-channels. Each sub-channel is modeled as a two-user Gaussian interference channel with quasi-static and flat fading. Both users employ single-layer Gaussian code-books and maintain a statistical correlation \rho between the signals transmitted over the underlying sub-channels. When joint decoding (JD) is performed at the receivers, setting \rho =0 minimizes the outage probability, regardless of the value of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). It is shown, however, that if the receivers treat interference as noise (TIN) or cancel interference (CI), the value of optimum \rho approaches 1 as SNR goes to infinity. Motivated by these observations, we let \rho =0 under JD and \rho =1 , it is shown that the outage probability scales like \mathrm snr^-(1-r) under both TIN and CI, while it vanishes at least as fast as \mathrm snr^-\min \2-r,4(1-r)\\log \mathrm snr under JD. This paper is concluded by extending some of the results to a two-user parallel Gaussian interference channel with an arbitrary number of sub-channels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The state-dependent Gaussian interference channel (IC) and Z-IC are investigated, in which two receivers are corrupted by the same but differently scaled states. The state sequence is noncausally known at both transmitters, but not known at either receiver. Three interference regimes are studied, i.e., the very strong, strong, and weak regimes. In the very strong regime, the capacity region is characterized under certain channel parameters by designing a cooperative dirty paper coding between the two transmitters to fully cancel the state. In the strong regime, points on the capacity region boundary are characterized under certain channel parameters by designing an achievable scheme based on rate splitting, layered dirty paper coding, and successive state cancellation. In the weak regime, the sum capacity is obtained by independent dirty paper coding at two transmitters. For all the above regimes, the capacity achieves that of the IC/Z-IC without state. Comparison between the state-dependent regular IC and the Z-IC suggests that even with one interference-free link, the Z-IC does not necessarily perform better, because dirty paper coded interference in the regular IC facilitates to cancel the state through the cooperative dirty paper coding between the transmitters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we determine the entire secure degrees of freedom (s.d.o.f.) regions of the $K$ -user Gaussian multiple access (MAC) wiretap channel and the $K$ -user interference channel (IC) with secrecy constraints. For the IC, we consider three secrecy constraints: K-user IC with an external eavesdropper (IC-EE), K-user IC with confidential messages (IC-CM), and their combination Kuser IC with confidential messages and external eavesdropper (IC-CM-EE). The converse for the IC includes constraints both due to secrecy as well as due to interference. For the IC, although the portion of the region close to the optimum sum s.d.o.f. point is governed by the upper bounds due to secrecy constraints, the other portions of the region are governed by the upper bounds due to interference constraints. Different from the existing literature, in order to fully understand the characterization of the s.d.o.f. region of the IC, one has to study the four-user case, i.e., the two- or three-user cases do not illustrate the full generality of the problem. In order to prove the achievability, we use the polytope structure of the converse region. In both MAC and IC cases, we develop explicit schemes that achieve the extreme points of the polytope region given by the converse. In particular, the extreme points of the MAC region are achieved by an $m$ -user MAC wiretap channel with $K-m$ helpers, i.e., by setting $K-m$ users’ secure rates to zero and utilizing them as pure (structured) cooperative jammers. The extreme points of the IC region are achieved by a $(K-m)$ -user IC with confidential messages, $m$ helpers, and $N$ external eavesdroppers, for $m\ge 1$ and a finite $N$ . A byproduct of our results in this paper is that the sum s.d.o.f. is achieved only at one extreme point of the s.d.o.f. region, which is the symmetric-rate extreme point, for both MAC and IC channel models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)-evolution, meaning the behavior as a function of the SNR, of the minimum mean-square error (MMSE) function of code sequences in several multi-user settings in the additive white Gaussian noise regime. The settings investigated in this context include the Gaussian wiretap channel, the Gaussian broadcast channel (BC), and the Gaussian BC with confidential messages (BCC). This paper shows that the specific properties of the SNR-evolution of the MMSE and conditional MMSE functions are necessary and sufficient conditions for capacity or equivocation achieving code sequences. In some cases, the complete SNR-evolution of a family of code sequences can be determined, providing significant insight into the disturbance (in terms of MMSE) such codes have on unintended receivers at other SNRs. Moreover, the effects of an additional MMSE constraint on the capacity region and on the SNR-evolution of code sequences are considered in the BC and BCC settings. Such an analysis emphasizes the tradeoff between rates and limited disturbance on unintended receivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on status age, which is a metric for measuring the freshness of a continually updated piece of information (i.e., status) as observed at a remote monitor. In paper, we study a system in which a sensor sends random status updates over a dynamic network to a monitor. For this system, we consider the impact of having messages take different routes through the network on the status age. First, we consider a network with plentiful resources (i.e., many nodes that can provide numerous alternate paths), so that packets need not wait in queues at each node in a multihop path. This system is modeled as a single queue with an infinite number of servers, specifically as an $M/M/\infty $ queue. Packets routed over a dynamic network may arrive at the monitor out of order, which we account for in our analysis for the $M/M/\infty $ model. We then consider a network with somewhat limited resources, so that packets can arrive out of order but also must wait in a queue. This is modeled as a single queue with two servers, specifically an $M/M/2$ queue. We present the exact approach to computing the analytical status age, and we provide an approximation that is shown to be close to the simulated age. We also compare both models with $M/M/1$ , which corresponds to severely limited network resources, and we demonstrate the tradeoff between the status age and the unnecessary network resource consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polar coding is a method for communication over noisy classical channels, which is provably capacity achieving and has an efficient encoding and decoding. Recently, this method has been generalized to the realm of quantum information processing, for tasks such as classical communication, private classical communication, and quantum communication. In this paper, we apply the polar coding method to network classical-quantum information theory, by making use of recent advances for related classical tasks. In particular, we consider problems such as the compound multiple access channel and the quantum interference channel. The main result of our work is that it is possible to achieve the best known inner bounds on the achievable rate regions for these tasks, without requiring a so-called quantum simultaneous decoder. Thus, this paper paves the way for developing network classical-quantum information theory further without requiring a quantum simultaneous decoder. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey on designs and analyses of various relay-destination transceiving schemes, such as zero-forcing (ZF), minimum mean squared error (MMSE), and maximum information rate (MIR) criteria, in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) amplify-and-forward (AF) relaying systems. In the first part of the paper, we suggest a new framework for the transceiver designs utilizing a decomposable property of the error covariance matrix to give a general insight on the system and make the analysis more tractable. Then, in the second part of the paper, we provide an in-depth analysis on their diversity performance. Our analysis embraces two different scenarios, namely, the diversity-multiplexing tradeoff (DMT) and the diversity-rate tradeoff (DRT). First, we derive compact closed-form expressions for the DMT through tight upper and lower bounds. Then, we observe that while our DMT analysis accurately predicts performance of the ZF and MIR schemes, the MMSE-based designs exhibit a complicated rate-dependent behavior and, thus, are very unpredictable via DMT for finite rate cases. Thus, second, we highlight this interesting observation and characterize the diversity of the MMSE schemes at all finite rates. This leads to closed-form expressions for the DRT which reveals relationship between diversity, spectral efficiency, and the number of antennas at each node. The DRT analysis compliments our work on DMT, and thus, the paper provides a complete understanding on the diversity of MIMO AF relaying systems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]