English

A Revisitation of Low-Rate Bounds on the Reliability Function of Discrete Memoryless Channels for List Decoding

Information Theory 2021-12-06 v3 math.IT

Abstract

We revise the proof of low-rate upper bounds on the reliability function of discrete memoryless channels for ordinary and list-decoding schemes, in particular Berlekamp and Blinovsky's zero-rate bound, as well as Blahut's bound for low rates. The available proofs of the zero-rate bound devised by Berlekamp and Blinovsky are somehow complicated in that they contain in one form or another some cumbersome "non-standard" procedures or computations. Here we follow Blinovsky's idea of using a Ramsey-theoretic result by Komlos, and we complement it with some missing steps to present a proof which is rigorous and easier to inspect. Furthermore, we show how these techniques can be used to fix an error that invalidated the proof of Blahut's low-rate bound, which is here presented in an extended form for list decoding and for general channels.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1912.04411,
  title  = {A Revisitation of Low-Rate Bounds on the Reliability Function of Discrete Memoryless Channels for List Decoding},
  author = {Marco Bondaschi and Marco Dalai},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1912.04411},
  year   = {2021}
}