English

Malleable Coding with Fixed Reuse

Information Theory 2011-05-11 v2 math.IT

Abstract

In cloud computing, storage area networks, remote backup storage, and similar settings, stored data is modified with updates from new versions. Representing information and modifying the representation are both expensive. Therefore it is desirable for the data to not only be compressed but to also be easily modified during updates. A malleable coding scheme considers both compression efficiency and ease of alteration, promoting codeword reuse. We examine the trade-off between compression efficiency and malleability cost-the difficulty of synchronizing compressed versions-measured as the length of a reused prefix portion. Through a coding theorem, the region of achievable rates and malleability is expressed as a single-letter optimization. Relationships to common information problems are also described.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0809.0737,
  title  = {Malleable Coding with Fixed Reuse},
  author = {Lav R. Varshney and Julius Kusuma and Vivek K Goyal},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0809.0737},
  year   = {2011}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-21T11:16:44.924Z