Title
Balancing forward and feedback error correction for erasure channels with unreliable feedback
Abstract
The traditional information theoretic approach to studyin g feedback is to consider ideal instantaneous high-rate feedback of the channel outputs to the encoder. This was acceptable in classical work because the results were negative: Shannon pointed out that even perfect feedback often does not improve capacity and in the context of symmetric DMCs, Dobrushin showed that it does not improve the fixed block-coding error exponents in the inter- esting high rate regime. However, it has recently been shown that perfect feedback does allow great improvements in the asymptotic tradeoff between end-to-end delay and probability of error, even for symmetric channels at high rate. Since gains are claimed with ideal instantaneous feed back, it is natural to wonder whether these improvements remain if the feedback is unreliable or otherwise limited. Here, packet-erasure channels are considered on both the forward and feedback links. First, the feedback channel is considered as a given and a strategy is given to balance forward and feedback error correction in the suitable information-theoretic limit of long end-to-end d elays. At high enough rates, perfect-feedback performance is asymptotically attainable despite having only unreliab le feedback! Second, the results are interpreted in the zero - sum case of "half-duplex" nodes where the allocation of bandwidth or time to the feedback channel comes at the direct expense of the forward channel. It turns out that even here, feedback is worthwhile since dramatically lower asymptotic delays are possible by appropriately balancing forward and feedback error correction. The results easily generalize to channels with strictly pos itive zero-undeclared-error capacities.
Year
Venue
Keywords
2007
Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research
rando m coding,hybrid arq,index terms feedback,reliability functions,delay,end to end delay,probability of error,indexing terms,erasure channel,error exponent,block codes,error correction,reliability function
Field
DocType
Volume
Control theory,Communication channel,Error detection and correction,Bandwidth (signal processing),Encoder,Probability of error,Mathematics,Erasure
Journal
abs/0712.0
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
5
0.55
17
Authors
1
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
A. Sahai11888198.31