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Deniz Gündüz

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Published work

40 published item(s)

preprint2026arXiv

Function Computation Over Multiple Access Channels via Hierarchical Constellations

We study function computation over a Gaussian multiple-access channel (MAC), where multiple transmitters aim at computing a function of their values at a common receiver. To this end, we propose a novel coded-modulation framework for over-the-air computation (OAC) based on hierarchical constellation design, which supports reliable computation of multiple function outputs using a single channel use. Moreover, we characterize the achievable computation rate and show that the proposed hierarchical constellations can compute R output functions with decoding error probability epsilon while the gap to the optimal computation rate scales as O(\log_2(1/ε)/K) for independent source symbols, where K denotes the number of transmitters. Consequently, this gap vanishes as the network size grows, and the optimal rate is asymptotically attained. Furthermore, we introduce a shielding mechanism based on variable-length block coding that mitigates noise-induced error propagation across constellation levels while preserving the superposition structure of the MAC. We show that the shielding technique improves reliability, yielding a gap that scales optimally as O(\log_2\ln{(1/ε)}), regardless of the source distribution. Together, these results identify the regimes in which uncoded or lightly coded OAC is information-theoretically optimal, providing a unified framework for low-latency, channel-agnostic function computation.

preprint2026arXiv

Remote Action Generation: Remote Control with Minimal Communication

We address the challenge of remote control where one or more actors, lacking direct reward access, are steered by a controller over a communication-constrained channel. The controller learns an optimal policy from observed rewards and communicates action guidance to the actors, which becomes demanding for large or continuous action spaces. To achieve rate-efficient communication throughout this interactive learning and control process, we introduce a novel framework leveraging remote generation. Instead of transmitting full action specifications, the controller sends minimal information, enabling the actors to locally generate actions by sampling from the controller's evolving target policy. This guided sampling is facilitated by an importance sampling approach. Concurrently, the actors use the received guidance as supervised learning data to learn the controller's policy. This actor-side learning improves their local sampling capabilities, progressively reducing future communication needs. Our solution, Guided Remote Action Sampling Policy (GRASP), demonstrates significant communication reduction, achieving an average 12-fold data reduction across all experiments (50-fold for continuous action spaces) compared to direct action transmission, and a 41-fold reduction compared to reward transmission.

preprint2022arXiv

A Learning Aided Flexible Gradient Descent Approach to MISO Beamforming

This paper proposes a learning aided gradient descent (LAGD) algorithm to solve the weighted sum rate (WSR) maximization problem for multiple-input single-output (MISO) beamforming. The proposed LAGD algorithm directly optimizes the transmit precoder through implicit gradient descent based iterations, at each of which the optimization strategy is determined by a neural network, and thus, is dynamic and adaptive. At each instance of the problem, this network is initialized randomly, and updated throughout the iterative solution process. Therefore, the LAGD algorithm can be implemented at any signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and for arbitrary antenna/user numbers, does not require labelled data or training prior to deployment. Numerical results show that the LAGD algorithm can outperform of the well-known WMMSE algorithm as well as other learning-based solutions with a modest computational complexity. Our code is available at https://github.com/XiaGroup/LAGD.

preprint2022arXiv

Channel-Adaptive Wireless Image Transmission with OFDM

We present a learning-based channel-adaptive joint source and channel coding (CA-JSCC) scheme for wireless image transmission over multipath fading channels. The proposed method is an end-to-end autoencoder architecture with a dual-attention mechanism employing orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) transmission. Unlike the previous works, our approach is adaptive to channel-gain and noise-power variations by exploiting the estimated channel state information (CSI). Specifically, with the proposed dual-attention mechanism, our model can learn to map the features and allocate transmission-power resources judiciously based on the estimated CSI. Extensive numerical experiments verify that CA-JSCC achieves state-of-the-art performance among existing JSCC schemes. In addition, CA-JSCC is robust to varying channel conditions and can better exploit the limited channel resources by transmitting critical features over better subchannels.

preprint2022arXiv

Cost-Efficient Distributed Learning via Combinatorial Multi-Armed Bandits

We consider the distributed SGD problem, where a main node distributes gradient calculations among $n$ workers. By assigning tasks to all the workers and waiting only for the $k$ fastest ones, the main node can trade-off the algorithm's error with its runtime by gradually increasing $k$ as the algorithm evolves. However, this strategy, referred to as adaptive $k$-sync, neglects the cost of unused computations and of communicating models to workers that reveal a straggling behavior. We propose a cost-efficient scheme that assigns tasks only to $k$ workers, and gradually increases $k$. We introduce the use of a combinatorial multi-armed bandit model to learn which workers are the fastest while assigning gradient calculations. Assuming workers with exponentially distributed response times parameterized by different means, we give empirical and theoretical guarantees on the regret of our strategy, i.e., the extra time spent to learn the mean response times of the workers. Furthermore, we propose and analyze a strategy applicable to a large class of response time distributions. Compared to adaptive $k$-sync, our scheme achieves significantly lower errors with the same computational efforts and less downlink communication while being inferior in terms of speed.

preprint2022arXiv

Federated Spatial Reuse Optimization in Next-Generation Decentralized IEEE 802.11 WLANs

As wireless standards evolve, more complex functionalities are introduced to address the increasing requirements in terms of throughput, latency, security, and efficiency. To unleash the potential of such new features, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are currently being exploited for deriving models and protocols from data, rather than by hand-programming. In this paper, we explore the feasibility of applying ML in next-generation wireless local area networks (WLANs). More specifically, we focus on the IEEE 802.11ax spatial reuse (SR) problem and predict its performance through federated learning (FL) models. The set of FL solutions overviewed in this work is part of the 2021 International Telecommunication Union (ITU) AI for 5G Challenge.

preprint2022arXiv

Over-the-Air Federated Edge Learning with Hierarchical Clustering

We examine federated learning (FL) with over-the-air (OTA) aggregation, where mobile users (MUs) aim to reach a consensus on a global model with the help of a parameter server (PS) that aggregates the local gradients. In OTA FL, MUs train their models using local data at every training round and transmit their gradients simultaneously using the same frequency band in an uncoded fashion. Based on the received signal of the superposed gradients, the PS performs a global model update. While the OTA FL has a significantly decreased communication cost, it is susceptible to adverse channel effects and noise. Employing multiple antennas at the receiver side can reduce these effects, yet the path-loss is still a limiting factor for users located far away from the PS. To ameliorate this issue, in this paper, we propose a wireless-based hierarchical FL scheme that uses intermediate servers (ISs) to form clusters at the areas where the MUs are more densely located. Our scheme utilizes OTA cluster aggregations for the communication of the MUs with their corresponding IS, and OTA global aggregations from the ISs to the PS. We present a convergence analysis for the proposed algorithm, and show through numerical evaluations of the derived analytical expressions and experimental results that utilizing ISs results in a faster convergence and a better performance than the OTA FL alone while using less transmit power. We also validate the results on the performance using different number of cluster iterations with different datasets and data distributions. We conclude that the best choice of cluster aggregations depends on the data distribution among the MUs and the clusters.

preprint2022arXiv

Over-the-Air Federated Learning with Energy Harvesting Devices

We consider federated edge learning (FEEL) among mobile devices that harvest the required energy from their surroundings, and share their updates with the parameter server (PS) through a shared wireless channel. In particular, we consider energy harvesting FL with over-the-air (OTA) aggregation, where the participating devices perform local computations and wireless transmission only when they have the required energy available, and transmit the local updates simultaneously over the same channel bandwidth. In order to prevent bias among heterogeneous devices, we utilize a weighted averaging with respect to their latest energy arrivals and data cardinalities. We provide a convergence analysis and carry out numerical experiments with different energy arrival profiles, which show that even though the proposed scheme is robust against devices with heterogeneous energy arrivals in error-free scenarios, we observe a 5-10% performance loss in energy harvesting OTA FL.

preprint2022arXiv

Quantifying and Localizing Usable Information Leakage from Neural Network Gradients

In collaborative learning, clients keep their data private and communicate only the computed gradients of the deep neural network being trained on their local data. Several recent attacks show that one can still extract private information from the shared network's gradients compromising clients' privacy. In this paper, to quantify the private information leakage from gradients we adopt usable information theory. We focus on two types of private information: original information in data reconstruction attacks and latent information in attribute inference attacks. Furthermore, a sensitivity analysis over the gradients is performed to explore the underlying cause of information leakage and validate the results of the proposed framework. Finally, we conduct numerical evaluations on six benchmark datasets and four well-known deep models. We measure the impact of training hyperparameters, e.g., batches and epochs, as well as potential defense mechanisms, e.g., dropout and differential privacy. Our proposed framework enables clients to localize and quantify the private information leakage in a layer-wise manner, and enables a better understanding of the sources of information leakage in collaborative learning, which can be used by future studies to benchmark new attacks and defense mechanisms.

preprint2022arXiv

Rate-Constrained Remote Contextual Bandits

We consider a rate-constrained contextual multi-armed bandit (RC-CMAB) problem, in which a group of agents are solving the same contextual multi-armed bandit (CMAB) problem. However, the contexts are observed by a remotely connected entity, i.e., the decision-maker, that updates the policy to maximize the returned rewards, and communicates the arms to be sampled by the agents to a controller over a rate-limited communications channel. This framework can be applied to personalized ad placement, whenever the content owner observes the website visitors, and hence has the context, but needs to transmit the ads to be shown to a controller that is in charge of placing the marketing content. Consequently, the rate-constrained CMAB (RC-CMAB) problem requires the study of lossy compression schemes for the policy to be employed whenever the constraint on the channel rate does not allow the uncompressed transmission of the decision-maker's intentions. We characterize the fundamental information theoretic limits of this problem by letting the number of agents go to infinity, and study the regret that can be achieved, identifying the two distinct rate regions leading to linear and sub-linear regrets respectively. We then analyze the optimal compression scheme achievable in the limit with infinite agents, when using the forward and reverse KL divergence as distortion metric. Based on this, we also propose a practical coding scheme, and provide numerical results.

preprint2022arXiv

Semi-Decentralized Federated Learning with Collaborative Relaying

We present a semi-decentralized federated learning algorithm wherein clients collaborate by relaying their neighbors' local updates to a central parameter server (PS). At every communication round to the PS, each client computes a local consensus of the updates from its neighboring clients and eventually transmits a weighted average of its own update and those of its neighbors to the PS. We appropriately optimize these averaging weights to ensure that the global update at the PS is unbiased and to reduce the variance of the global update at the PS, consequently improving the rate of convergence. Numerical simulations substantiate our theoretical claims and demonstrate settings with intermittent connectivity between the clients and the PS, where our proposed algorithm shows an improved convergence rate and accuracy in comparison with the federated averaging algorithm.

preprint2022arXiv

Time-Correlated Sparsification for Efficient Over-the-Air Model Aggregation in Wireless Federated Learning

Federated edge learning (FEEL) is a promising distributed machine learning (ML) framework to drive edge intelligence applications. However, due to the dynamic wireless environments and the resource limitations of edge devices, communication becomes a major bottleneck. In this work, we propose time-correlated sparsification with hybrid aggregation (TCS-H) for communication-efficient FEEL, which exploits jointly the power of model compression and over-the-air computation. By exploiting the temporal correlations among model parameters, we construct a global sparsification mask, which is identical across devices, and thus enables efficient model aggregation over-the-air. Each device further constructs a local sparse vector to explore its own important parameters, which are aggregated via digital communication with orthogonal multiple access. We further design device scheduling and power allocation algorithms for TCS-H. Experiment results show that, under limited communication resources, TCS-H can achieve significantly higher accuracy compared to the conventional top-K sparsification with orthogonal model aggregation, with both i.i.d. and non-i.i.d. data distributions.

preprint2021arXiv

Coded Computation across Shared Heterogeneous Workers with Communication Delay

Distributed computing enables large-scale computation tasks to be processed over multiple workers in parallel. However, the randomness of communication and computation delays across workers causes the straggler effect, which may degrade the performance. Coded computation helps to mitigate the straggler effect, but the amount of redundant load and their assignment to the workers should be carefully optimized. In this work, we consider a multi-master heterogeneous-worker distributed computing scenario, where multiple matrix multiplication tasks are encoded and allocated to workers for parallel computation. The goal is to minimize the communication plus computation delay of the slowest task. We propose worker assignment, resource allocation and load allocation algorithms under both dedicated and fractional worker assignment policies, where each worker can process the encoded tasks of either a single master or multiple masters, respectively. Then, the non-convex delay minimization problem is solved by employing the Markov's inequality-based approximation, Karush-Kuhn-Tucker conditions, and successive convex approximation methods. Through extensive simulations, we show that the proposed algorithms can reduce the task completion delay compared to the benchmarks, and observe that dedicated and fractional worker assignment policies have different scopes of applications.

preprint2021arXiv

Dopamine: Differentially Private Federated Learning on Medical Data

While rich medical datasets are hosted in hospitals distributed across the world, concerns on patients' privacy is a barrier against using such data to train deep neural networks (DNNs) for medical diagnostics. We propose Dopamine, a system to train DNNs on distributed datasets, which employs federated learning (FL) with differentially-private stochastic gradient descent (DPSGD), and, in combination with secure aggregation, can establish a better trade-off between differential privacy (DP) guarantee and DNN's accuracy than other approaches. Results on a diabetic retinopathy~(DR) task show that Dopamine provides a DP guarantee close to the centralized training counterpart, while achieving a better classification accuracy than FL with parallel DP where DPSGD is applied without coordination. Code is available at https://github.com/ipc-lab/private-ml-for-health.

preprint2020arXiv

Deep Learning for Massive MIMO Channel State Acquisition and Feedback

Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems are a main enabler of the excessive throughput requirements in 5G and future generation wireless networks as they can serve many users simultaneously with high spectral and energy efficiency. To achieve this, massive MIMO systems require accurate and timely channel state information (CSI), which is acquired by a training process that involves pilot transmission, CSI estimation and feedback. This training process incurs a training overhead, which scales with the number of antennas, users and subcarriers. Reducing this training overhead in massive MIMO systems has been a major topic of research since the emergence of the concept. Recently, deep learning (DL)-based approaches for massive MIMO training have been proposed and showed significant improvements compared to traditional techniques. This paper provides an overview of how neural networks (NNs) can be used in the training process of massive MIMO systems to improve the performance by reducing the CSI acquisition overhead and to reduce complexity.

preprint2020arXiv

DeepJSCC-f: Deep Joint Source-Channel Coding of Images with Feedback

We consider wireless transmission of images in the presence of channel output feedback. From a Shannon theoretic perspective feedback does not improve the asymptotic end-to-end performance, and separate source coding followed by capacity-achieving channel coding, which ignores the feedback signal, achieves the optimal performance. It is well known that separation is not optimal in the practical finite blocklength regime; however, there are no known practical joint source-channel coding (JSCC) schemes that can exploit the feedback signal and surpass the performance of separation-based schemes. Inspired by the recent success of deep learning methods for JSCC, we investigate how noiseless or noisy channel output feedback can be incorporated into the transmission system to improve the reconstruction quality at the receiver. We introduce an autoencoder-based JSCC scheme, which we call DeepJSCC-f, that exploits the channel output feedback, and provides considerable improvements in terms of the end-to-end reconstruction quality for fixed-length transmission, or in terms of the average delay for variable-length transmission. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first practical JSCC scheme that can fully exploit channel output feedback, demonstrating yet another setting in which modern machine learning techniques can enable the design of new and efficient communication methods that surpass the performance of traditional structured coding-based designs.

preprint2020arXiv

Distributed Deep Reinforcement Learning for Functional Split Control in Energy Harvesting Virtualized Small Cells

To meet the growing quest for enhanced network capacity, mobile network operators (MNOs) are deploying dense infrastructures of small cells. This, in turn, increases the power consumption of mobile networks, thus impacting the environment. As a result, we have seen a recent trend of powering mobile networks with harvested ambient energy to achieve both environmental and cost benefits. In this paper, we consider a network of virtualized small cells (vSCs) powered by energy harvesters and equipped with rechargeable batteries, which can opportunistically offload baseband (BB) functions to a grid-connected edge server depending on their energy availability. We formulate the corresponding grid energy and traffic drop rate minimization problem, and propose a distributed deep reinforcement learning (DDRL) solution. Coordination among vSCs is enabled via the exchange of battery state information. The evaluation of the network performance in terms of grid energy consumption and traffic drop rate confirms that enabling coordination among the vSCs via knowledge exchange achieves a performance close to the optimal. Numerical results also confirm that the proposed DDRL solution provides higher network performance, better adaptation to the changing environment, and higher cost savings with respect to a tabular multi-agent reinforcement learning (MRL) solution used as a benchmark.

preprint2020arXiv

Information transmission bounds between moving terminals

In networks of mobile autonomous agents, e.g. for data acquisition, we may wish to maximize data transfer or to reliably transfer a minimum amount of data, subject to quality of service or energy constraints. These requirements can be guaranteed through both offline node design/specifications and online trajectory/communications design. Regardless of the distance between them, for a stationary point-to-point transmitter-receiver pair communicating across a single link under average power constraints, the total data transfer is unbounded as time tends to infinity. In contrast, we show that if the transmitter/receiver is moving at any constant speed away from each other, then the maximum transmittable data is bounded. Although general closed-form expressions as a function of communication and mobility profile parameters do not yet exist, we provide closed-form expressions for particular cases, such as ideal free space path loss. Under more general scenarios we instead give lower bounds on the total transmittable information across a single link between mobile nodes.

preprint2020arXiv

Multi-Antenna Coded Content Delivery with Caching: A Low-Complexity Solution

We study downlink beamforming in a single-cell network with a multi-antenna base station serving cache-enabled users. Assuming a library of files with a common rate, we formulate the minimum transmit power with proactive caching and coded delivery as a non-convex optimization problem. While this multiple multicast problem can be efficiently solved by successive convex approximation (SCA), the complexity of the problem grows exponentially with the number of subfiles delivered to each user in each time slot, which itself grows exponentially with the number of users. We introduce a low-complexity alternative through time-sharing that limits the number of subfiles received by a user in each time slot. We then consider the joint design of beamforming and content delivery with sparsity constraints to limit the number of subfiles received by a user in each time slot. Numerical simulations show that the low-complexity scheme has only a small performance gap to that obtained by solving the joint problem with sparsity constraints, and outperforms state-of-the-art results at all signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and rate values with a sufficient number of transmit antennas. A lower bound on the achievable degrees-of-freedom (DoF) of the low-complexity scheme is derived to characterize its performance in the high SNR regime.

preprint2020arXiv

Privacy-aware Distributed Hypothesis Testing

A distributed binary hypothesis testing (HT) problem involving two parties, a remote observer and a detector, is studied. The remote observer has access to a discrete memoryless source, and communicates its observations to the detector via a rate-limited noiseless channel. The detector observes another discrete memoryless source, and performs a binary hypothesis test on the joint distribution of its own observations with those of the observer. While the goal of the observer is to maximize the type II error exponent of the test for a given type I error probability constraint, it also wants to keep a private part of its observations as oblivious to the detector as possible. Considering both equivocation and average distortion under a causal disclosure assumption as possible measures of privacy, the trade-off between the communication rate from the observer to the detector, the type II error exponent, and privacy is studied. For the general HT problem, we establish single-letter inner bounds on both the rate-error exponent-equivocation and rate-error exponent-distortion trade-offs. Subsequently, single-letter characterizations for both trade-offs are obtained (i) for testing against conditional independence of the observer's observations from those of the detector, given some additional side-information at the detector; and (ii) when the communication rate constraint over the channel is zero. Finally, we show by providing a counterexample that, the strong converse which holds for distributed HT without a privacy constraint, does not hold when a privacy constraint is imposed. This implies that, in general, the rate-error exponent-equivocation and rate-error exponent-distortion trade-offs are not independent of the type I error probability constraint.

preprint2020arXiv

Strong Converse for Testing Against Independence over a Noisy channel

A distributed binary hypothesis testing (HT) problem over a noisy (discrete and memoryless) channel studied previously by the authors is investigated from the perspective of the strong converse property. It was shown by Ahlswede and Csiszár that a strong converse holds in the above setting when the channel is rate-limited and noiseless. Motivated by this observation, we show that the strong converse continues to hold in the noisy channel setting for a special case of HT known as testing against independence (TAI). The proof utilizes the blowing up lemma and the recent change of measure technique of Tyagi and Watanabe as the key tools.

preprint2019arXiv

Average Age-of-Information with a Backup Information Source

Data collected and transmitted by Internet of things (IoT) devices are typically used for control and monitoring purposes; and hence, their timely delivery is of utmost importance for the underlying applications. However, IoT devices operate with very limited energy sources, severely reducing their ability for timely collection and processing of status updates. IoT systems make up for these limitations by employing multiple low-power low-complexity devices that can monitor the same signal, possibly with different quality observations and different energy costs, to create diversity against the limitations of individual nodes. We investigate policies to minimize the average age of information (AoI) in a monitoring system that collects data from two sources of information denoted as primary and backup sources, respectively. We assume that each source offers a different trade-off between the AoI and the energy cost. The monitoring node is equipped with a finite size battery and harvests ambient energy. For this setup, we formulate the scheduling of status updates from the two sources as a Markov decision process (MDP), and obtain a policy that decides on the optimal action to take (i.e., which source to query or remain idle) depending on the current energy level and AoI. The performance of the obtained policy is compared with an aggressive policy for different system parameters. We identify few types of optimal solution structures and discuss the benefits of having a backup source of information in the system.

preprint2016arXiv

Decentralized Coded Caching with Distinct Cache Capacities

Decentralized coded caching is studied for a content server with $N$ files, each of size $F$ bits, serving $K$ active users, each equipped with a cache of distinct capacity. It is assumed that the users' caches are filled in advance during the off-peak traffic period without the knowledge of the number of active users, their identities, or the particular demands. User demands are revealed during the peak traffic period, and are served simultaneously through an error-free shared link. A new decentralized coded caching scheme is proposed for this scenario, and it is shown to improve upon the state-of-the-art in terms of the required delivery rate over the shared link, when there are more users in the system than the number of files. Numerical results indicate that the improvement becomes more significant as the cache capacities of the users become more skewed.

preprint2016arXiv

Wireless Content Caching for Small Cell and D2D Networks

The fifth generation wireless networks must provide fast and reliable connectivity while coping with the ongoing traffic growth. It is of paramount importance that the required resources, such as energy and bandwidth, do not scale with traffic. While the aggregate network traffic is growing at an unprecedented rate, users tend to request the same popular contents at different time instants. Therefore, caching the most popular contents at the network edge is a promising solution to reduce the traffic and the energy consumption over the backhaul links. In this paper, two scenarios are considered, where caching is performed either at a small base station, or directly at the user terminals, which communicate using \ac{D2D} communications. In both scenarios, joint design of the transmission and caching policies is studied when the user demands are known in advance. This joint design offers two different caching gains, namely, the \textit{pre-downloading} and \textit{local caching gains}. It is shown that the finite cache capacity limits the attainable gains, and creates an inherent tradeoff between the two types of gains. In this context, a continuous time optimization problem is formulated to determine the optimal transmission and caching policies that minimize a generic cost function, such as energy, bandwidth, or throughput. The jointly optimal solution is obtained by demonstrating that caching files at a constant rate is optimal, which allows to reformulate the problem as a finite-dimensional convex program. The numerical results show that the proposed joint transmission and caching policy dramatically reduces the total cost, which is particularised to the total energy consumption at the \ac{MBS}, as well as to the total economical cost for the service provider, when users demand economical incentives for delivering content to other users over the D2D links.

preprint2016arXiv

Zero-Delay Joint Source-Channel Coding in the Presence of Interference Known at the Encoder

Zero-delay transmission of a Gaussian source over an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel is considered in the presence of an additive Gaussian interference signal. The mean squared error (MSE) distortion is minimized under an average power constraint assuming that the interference signal is known at the transmitter. Optimality of simple linear transmission does not hold in this setting due to the presence of the known interference signal. While the optimal encoder-decoder pair remains an open problem, various non-linear transmission schemes are proposed in this paper. In particular, interference concentration (ICO) and one-dimensional lattice (1DL) strategies, using both uniform and non-uniform quantization of the interference signal, are studied. It is shown that, in contrast to typical scalar quantization of Gaussian sources, a non-uniform quantizer, whose quantization intervals become smaller as we go further from zero, improves the performance. Given that the optimal decoder is the minimum MSE (MMSE) estimator, a necessary condition for the optimality of the encoder is derived, and the numerically optimized encoder (NOE) satisfying this condition is obtained. Based on the numerical results, it is shown that 1DL with non-uniform quantization performs closer (compared to the other schemes) to the numerically optimized encoder while requiring significantly lower complexity.

preprint2015arXiv

Capacity of a Class of State-Dependent Orthogonal Relay Channels

The class of orthogonal relay channels in which the orthogonal channels connecting the source terminal to the relay and the destination, and the relay to the destination, depend on a state sequence, is considered. It is assumed that the state sequence is fully known at the destination while it is not known at the source or the relay. The capacity of this class of relay channels is characterized, and shown to be achieved by the partial decode-compress-and-forward (pDCF) scheme. Then the capacity of certain binary and Gaussian state-dependent orthogonal relay channels are studied in detail, and it is shown that the compress-and-forward (CF) and partial-decode-and-forward (pDF) schemes are suboptimal in general. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first single relay channel model for which the capacity is achieved by pDCF, while pDF and CF schemes are both suboptimal. Furthermore, it is shown that the capacity of the considered class of state-dependent orthogonal relay channels is in general below the cut-set bound. The conditions under which pDF or CF suffices to meet the cut-set bound, and hence, achieve the capacity, are also derived.

preprint2015arXiv

Distortion Exponent in MIMO Fading Channels with Time-Varying Source Side Information

Transmission of a Gaussian source over a time-varying multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel is studied under strict delay constraints. Availability of a correlated side information at the receiver is assumed, whose quality, i.e., correlation with the source signal, also varies over time. A block-fading model is considered for the states of the time-varying channel and the time-varying side information; and perfect state information at the receiver is assumed, while the transmitter knows only the statistics. The high SNR performance, characterized by the \textit{distortion exponent}, is studied for this joint source-channel coding problem. An upper bound is derived and compared with lowers based on list decoding, hybrid digital-analog transmission, as well as multi-layer schemes which transmit successive refinements of the source, relying on progressive and superposed transmission with list decoding. The optimal distortion exponent is characterized for the single-input multiple-output (SIMO) and multiple-input single-output (MISO) scenarios by showing that the distortion exponent achieved by multi-layer superpositon encoding with joint decoding meets the proposed upper bound. In the MIMO scenario, the optimal distortion exponent is characterized in the low bandwidth ratio regime, and it is shown that the multi-layer superposition encoding performs very close to the upper bound in the high bandwidth expansion regime.

preprint2015arXiv

Joint Source-Channel Coding with Time-Varying Channel and Side-Information

Transmission of a Gaussian source over a time-varying Gaussian channel is studied in the presence of time-varying correlated side information at the receiver. A block fading model is considered for both the channel and the side information, whose states are assumed to be known only at the receiver. The optimality of separate source and channel coding in terms of average end-to-end distortion is shown when the channel is static while the side information state follows a discrete or a continuous and quasiconcave distribution. When both the channel and side information states are time-varying, separate source and channel coding is suboptimal in general. A partially informed encoder lower bound is studied by providing the channel state information to the encoder. Several achievable transmission schemes are proposed based on uncoded transmission, separate source and channel coding, joint decoding as well as hybrid digital-analog transmission. Uncoded transmission is shown to be optimal for a class of continuous and quasiconcave side information state distributions, while the channel gain may have an arbitrary distribution. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first example in which the uncoded transmission achieves the optimal performance thanks to the time-varying nature of the states, while it is suboptimal in the static version of the same problem. Then, the optimal \emph{distortion exponent}, that quantifies the exponential decay rate of the expected distortion in the high SNR regime, is characterized for Nakagami distributed channel and side information states, and it is shown to be achieved by hybrid digital-analog and joint decoding schemes in certain cases, illustrating the suboptimality of pure digital or analog transmission in general.

preprint2015arXiv

Optimization of Energy Harvesting MISO Communication System with Feedback

Optimization of a point-to-point (p2p) multipleinput single-output (MISO) communication system is considered when both the transmitter (TX) and the receiver (RX) have energy harvesting (EH) capabilities. The RX is interested in feeding back the channel state information (CSI) to the TX to help improve the transmission rate. The objective is to maximize the throughput by a deadline, subject to the EH constraints at the TX and the RX. The throughput metric considered is an upper bound on the ergodic rate of the MISO channel with beamforming and limited feedback. Feedback bit allocation and transmission policies that maximize the upper bound on the ergodic rate are obtained. Tools from majorization theory are used to simplify the formulated optimization problems. Optimal policies obtained for the modified problem outperform the naive scheme in which no intelligent management of energy is performed.

preprint2015arXiv

Smart Meter Privacy with an Energy Harvesting Device and Instantaneous Power Constraints

A smart meter (SM) periodically measures end-user electricity consumption and reports it to a utility provider (UP). Despite the advantages of SMs, their use leads to serious concerns about consumer privacy. In this paper, SM privacy is studied by considering the presence of an energy harvesting device (EHD) as a means of masking the user's input load. The user can satisfy part or all of his/her energy needs from the EHD, and hence, less information can be leaked to the UP via the SM. The EHD is typically equipped with a rechargeable energy storage device, i.e., a battery, whose instantaneous energy content limits the user's capability in covering his/her energy usage. Privacy is measured by the information leaked about the user's real energy consumption when the UP observes the energy requested from the grid, which the SM reads and reports to the UP. The minimum information leakage rate is characterized as a computable information theoretic single-letter expression when the EHD battery capacity is either infinite or zero. Numerical results are presented for a discrete binary input load to illustrate the potential privacy gains from the existence of a storage device.

preprint2015arXiv

Throughput and Delay Analysis in Video Streaming over Block-Fading Channels

We study video streaming over a slow fading wireless channel. In a streaming application video packets are required to be decoded and displayed in the order they are transmitted as the transmission goes on. This results in per-packet delay constraints, and the resulting channel can be modeled as a physically degraded fading broadcast channel with as many virtual users as the number of packets. In this paper we study two important quality of user experience (QoE) metrics, namely throughput and inter-decoding delay. We introduce several transmission schemes, and compare their throughput and maximum inter-decoding delay performances. We also introduce a genie-aided scheme, which provides theoretical bounds on the achievable performance. We observe that adapting the transmission rate at the packet level, i.e., periodically dropping a subset of the packets, leads to a good tradeoff between the throughput and the maximum inter-decoding delay. We also show that an approach based on initial buffering leads to an asymptotically vanishing packet loss rate at the expense of a relatively large initial delay. For this scheme we derive a condition on the buffering time that leads to throughput maximization.

preprint2014arXiv

Content-Level Selective Offloading in Heterogeneous Networks: Multi-armed Bandit Optimization and Regret Bounds

We consider content-level selective offloading of cellular downlink traffic to a wireless infostation terminal which stores high data-rate content in its cache memory. Cellular users in the vicinity of the infostation can directly download the stored content from the infostation through a broadband connection (e.g., WiFi), reducing the latency and load on the cellular network. The goal of the infostation cache controller (CC) is to store the most popular content in the cache memory such that the maximum amount of traffic is offloaded to the infostation. In practice, the popularity profile of the files is not known by the CC, which observes only the instantaneous demands for those contents stored in the cache. Hence, the cache content placement is optimised based on the demand history and on the cost associated to placing each content in the cache. By refreshing the cache content at regular time intervals, the CC gradually learns the popularity profile, while at the same time exploiting the limited cache capacity in the best way possible. This is formulated as a multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem with switching cost. Several algorithms are presented to decide on the cache content over time. The performance is measured in terms of cache efficiency, defined as the amount of net traffic that is offloaded to the infostation. In addition to theoretical regret bounds, the proposed algorithms are analysed through numerical simulations. In particular, the impact of system parameters, such as the number of files, number of users, cache size, and skewness of the popularity profile, on the performance is studied numerically. It is shown that the proposed algorithms learn the popularity profile quickly for a wide range of system parameters.

preprint2014arXiv

On Joint Source-Channel Coding for Correlated Sources Over Multiple-Access Relay Channels

We study the transmission of correlated sources over discrete memoryless (DM) multiple-access-relay channels (MARCs), in which both the relay and the destination have access to side information arbitrarily correlated with the sources. As the optimal transmission scheme is an open problem, in this work we propose a new joint source-channel coding scheme based on a novel combination of the correlation preserving mapping (CPM) technique with Slepian-Wolf (SW) source coding, and obtain the corresponding sufficient conditions. The proposed coding scheme is based on the decode-and-forward strategy, and utilizes CPM for encoding information simultaneously to the relay and the destination, whereas the cooperation information from the relay is encoded via SW source coding. It is shown that there are cases in which the new scheme strictly outperforms the schemes available in the literature. This is the first instance of a source-channel code that uses CPM for encoding information to two different nodes (relay and destination). In addition to sufficient conditions, we present three different sets of single-letter necessary conditions for reliable transmission of correlated sources over DM MARCs. The newly derived conditions are shown to be at least as tight as the previously known necessary conditions.

preprint2014arXiv

Smart Meter Privacy for Multiple Users in the Presence of an Alternative Energy Source

Smart meters (SMs) measure and report users' energy consumption to the utility provider (UP) in almost real-time, providing a much more detailed depiction of the consumer's energy consumption compared to their analog counterparts. This increased rate of information flow to the UP, together with its many potential benefits, raise important concerns regarding user privacy. This work investigates, from an information theoretic perspective, the privacy that can be achieved in a multi-user SM system in the presence of an alternative energy source (AES). To measure privacy, we use the mutual information rate between the users' real energy consumption profile and the SM readings that are available to the UP. The objective is to characterize the \textit{privacy-power function}, defined as the minimal information leakage rate that can be obtained with an average power limited AES. We characterize the privacy-power function in a single-letter form when the users' energy demands are assumed to be independent and identically distributed over time. Moreover, for binary and exponentially distributed energy demands, we provide an explicit characterization of the privacy-power function. For any discrete energy demands, we demonstrate that the privacy-power function can always be efficiently evaluated numerically. Finally, for continuous energy demands, we derive an explicit lower-bound on the privacy-power function, which is tight for exponentially distributed loads.

preprint2013arXiv

Source-Channel Coding Theorems for the Multiple-Access Relay Channel

We study reliable transmission of arbitrarily correlated sources over multiple-access relay channels (MARCs) and multiple-access broadcast relay channels (MABRCs). In MARCs only the destination is interested in reconstructing the sources, while in MABRCs both the relay and the destination want to reconstruct them. In addition to arbitrary correlation among the source signals at the users, both the relay and the destination have side information correlated with the source signals. Our objective is to determine whether a given pair of sources can be losslessly transmitted to the destination for a given number of channel symbols per source sample, defined as the source-channel rate. Sufficient conditions for reliable communication based on operational separation, as well as necessary conditions on the achievable source-channel rates are characterized. Since operational separation is generally not optimal for MARCs and MABRCs, sufficient conditions for reliable communication using joint source-channel coding schemes based on a combination of the correlation preserving mapping technique with Slepian-Wolf source coding are also derived. For correlated sources transmitted over fading Gaussian MARCs and MABRCs, we present conditions under which separation (i.e., separate and stand-alone source and channel codes) is optimal. This is the first time optimality of separation is proved for MARCs and MABRCs.

preprint2012arXiv

A Learning Theoretic Approach to Energy Harvesting Communication System Optimization

A point-to-point wireless communication system in which the transmitter is equipped with an energy harvesting device and a rechargeable battery, is studied. Both the energy and the data arrivals at the transmitter are modeled as Markov processes. Delay-limited communication is considered assuming that the underlying channel is block fading with memory, and the instantaneous channel state information is available at both the transmitter and the receiver. The expected total transmitted data during the transmitter's activation time is maximized under three different sets of assumptions regarding the information available at the transmitter about the underlying stochastic processes. A learning theoretic approach is introduced, which does not assume any a priori information on the Markov processes governing the communication system. In addition, online and offline optimization problems are studied for the same setting. Full statistical knowledge and causal information on the realizations of the underlying stochastic processes are assumed in the online optimization problem, while the offline optimization problem assumes non-causal knowledge of the realizations in advance. Comparing the optimal solutions in all three frameworks, the performance loss due to the lack of the transmitter's information regarding the behaviors of the underlying Markov processes is quantified.

preprint2012arXiv

Joint Source-Channel Coding for the Multiple-Access Relay Channel

Reliable transmission of arbitrarily correlated sources over multiple-access relay channels (MARCs) and multiple-access broadcast relay channels (MABRCs) is considered. In MARCs, only the destination is interested in a reconstruction of the sources, while in MABRCs, both the relay and the destination want to reconstruct the sources. We allow an arbitrary correlation among the sources at the transmitters, and let both the relay and the destination have side information that are correlated with the sources. Two joint source-channel coding schemes are presented and the corresponding sets of sufficient conditions for reliable communication are derived. The proposed schemes use a combination of the correlation preserving mapping (CPM) technique with Slepian-Wolf (SW) source coding: the first scheme uses CPM for encoding information to the relay and SW source coding for encoding information to the destination; while the second scheme uses SW source coding for encoding information to the relay and CPM for encoding information to the destination.

preprint2012arXiv

Source-Channel Coding for the Multiple-Access Relay Channel

This work considers reliable transmission of general correlated sources over the multiple-access relay channel (MARC) and the multiple-access broadcast relay channel (MABRC). In MARCs only the destination is interested in a reconstruction of the sources, while in MABRCs both the relay and the destination want to reconstruct the sources. We assume that both the relay and the destination have correlated side information. We find sufficient conditions for reliable communication based on operational separation, as well as necessary conditions on the achievable source-channel rate. For correlated sources transmitted over fading Gaussian MARCs and MABRCs we find conditions under which informational separation is optimal.

preprint2012arXiv

Streaming Transmitter over Block-Fading Channels with Delay Constraint

Data streaming transmission over a block fading channel is studied. It is assumed that the transmitter receives a new message at each channel block at a constant rate, which is fixed by an underlying application, and tries to deliver the arriving messages by a common deadline. Various transmission schemes are proposed and compared with an informed transmitter upper bound in terms of the average decoded rate. It is shown that in the single receiver case the adaptive joint encoding (aJE) scheme is asymptotically optimal, in that it achieves the ergodic capacity as the transmission deadline goes to infinity; and it closely follows the performance of the informed transmitter upper bound in the case of finite transmission deadline. On the other hand, in the presence of multiple receivers with different signal-to-noise ratios (SNR), memoryless transmission (MT), time sharing (TS) and superposition transmission (ST) schemes are shown to be more robust than the joint encoding (JE) scheme as they have gradual performance loss with decreasing SNR.

preprint2012arXiv

Throughput Maximization for an Energy Harvesting Communication System with Processing Cost

In wireless networks, energy consumed for communication includes both the transmission and the processing energy. In this paper, point-to-point communication over a fading channel with an energy harvesting transmitter is studied considering jointly the energy costs of transmission and processing. Under the assumption of known energy arrival and fading profiles, optimal transmission policy for throughput maximization is investigated. Assuming that the transmitter has sufficient amount of data in its buffer at the beginning of the transmission period, the average throughput by a given deadline is maximized. Furthermore, a "directional glue pouring algorithm" that computes the optimal transmission policy is described.