In this paper, we consider the problem of variable-length coding over the class of memoryless binary asymmetric channels (BACs) with noiseless feedback, including the binary symmetric channel (BSC) as a special case. In 2012, Naghshvar et al. introduced an encoding scheme, which we refer to as the small-enough-difference (SED) encoder, which asymptotically achieves both capacity and Burnashev's optimal error exponent for symmetric binary-input channels. Building on the work of Naghshvar et al., this paper extends the SED encoding scheme to the class of BACs and develops a non-asymptotic upper bound on the average blocklength that is shown to achieve both capacity and the optimal error exponent. For the specific case of the BSC, we develop an additional non-asymptotic bound using a two-phase analysis that leverages both a submartingale synthesis and a Markov chain time of first passage analysis. For the BSC with capacity $1/2$, both new achievability bounds exceed the achievability bound of Polyanskiy et al. for a system limited to stop-feedback codes.
A memoryless state-dependent multiple-access channel (MAC) is considered, where two transmitters wish to convey their messages to a single receiver while simultaneously sensing (estimating) the respective states via generalized feedbacks. For this channel, an improved inner bound is provided on the \emph{fundamental rate-distortions tradeoff} which characterizes the communication rates the transmitters can achieve while simultaneously ensuring that their state-estimates satisfy desired distortion criteria. The new inner bound is based on a scheme where each transmitter codes over the generalized feedback so as to improve the state estimation at the other transmitter. This is in contrast to the schemes proposed for point-to-point and broadcast channels where coding is used only for the transmission of messages and the optimal estimators operate on a symbol-by-symbol basis on the sequences of channel inputs and feedback outputs.
In a realistic wireless environment, the multi-antenna channel usually exhibits spatially correlation fading. This is more emphasized when a large number of antennas is densely deployed, known as holographic massive MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output). In the first part of this letter, we develop a channel model for holographic massive MIMO by considering both non-isotropic scattering and directive antennas. With a large number of antennas, it is difficult to obtain full knowledge of the spatial correlation matrix. In this case, channel estimation is conventionally done using the least-squares (LS) estimator that requires no prior information of the channel statistics or array geometry. In the second part of this letter, we propose a novel channel estimation scheme that exploits the array geometry to identify a subspace of reduced rank that covers the eigenspace of any spatial correlation matrix. The proposed estimator outperforms the LS estimator, without using any user-specific channel statistics.
Computing kinodynamically feasible motion plans and repairing them on-the-fly as the environment changes is a challenging, yet relevant problem in robot-navigation. We propose a novel online single-query sampling-based motion re-planning algorithm - PiP-X, using finite-time invariant sets - funnels. We combine concepts from sampling-based methods, nonlinear systems analysis and control theory to create a single framework that enables feedback motion re-planning for any general nonlinear dynamical system in dynamic workspaces. A volumetric funnel-graph is constructed using sampling-based methods, and an optimal funnel-path from robot configuration to a desired goal region is then determined by computing the shortest-path subtree in it. Analysing and formally quantifying the stability of trajectories using Lyapunov level-set theory ensures kinodynamic feasibility and guaranteed set-invariance of the solution-paths. The use of incremental search techniques and a pre-computed library of motion-primitives ensure that our method can be used for quick online rewiring of controllable motion plans in densely cluttered and dynamic environments. We represent traversability and sequencibility of trajectories together in the form of an augmented directed-graph, helping us leverage discrete graph-based replanning algorithms to efficiently recompute feasible and controllable motion plans that are volumetric in nature. We validate our approach on a simulated 6DOF quadrotor platform in a variety of scenarios within a maze and random forest environment. From repeated experiments, we analyse the performance in terms of algorithm-success and length of traversed-trajectory.
This paper considers the distributed online convex optimization problem with time-varying constraints over a network of agents. This is a sequential decision making problem with two sequences of arbitrarily varying convex loss and constraint functions. At each round, each agent selects a decision from the decision set, and then only a portion of the loss function and a coordinate block of the constraint function at this round are privately revealed to this agent. The goal of the network is to minimize the network-wide loss accumulated over time. Two distributed online algorithms with full-information and bandit feedback are proposed. Both dynamic and static network regret bounds are analyzed for the proposed algorithms, and network cumulative constraint violation is used to measure constraint violation, which excludes the situation that strictly feasible constraints can compensate the effects of violated constraints. In particular, we show that the proposed algorithms achieve $\mathcal{O}(T^{\max\{\kappa,1-\kappa\}})$ static network regret and $\mathcal{O}(T^{1-\kappa/2})$ network cumulative constraint violation, where $T$ is the time horizon and $\kappa\in(0,1)$ is a user-defined trade-off parameter. Moreover, if the loss functions are strongly convex, then the static network regret bound can be reduced to $\mathcal{O}(T^{\kappa})$. Finally, numerical simulations are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the theoretical results.
Analog crossbar arrays comprising programmable nonvolatile resistors are under intense investigation for acceleration of deep neural network training. However, the ubiquitous asymmetric conductance modulation of practical resistive devices critically degrades the classification performance of networks trained with conventional algorithms. Here, we describe and experimentally demonstrate an alternative fully-parallel training algorithm: Stochastic Hamiltonian Descent. Instead of conventionally tuning weights in the direction of the error function gradient, this method programs the network parameters to successfully minimize the total energy (Hamiltonian) of the system that incorporates the effects of device asymmetry. We provide critical intuition on why device asymmetry is fundamentally incompatible with conventional training algorithms and how the new approach exploits it as a useful feature instead. Our technique enables immediate realization of analog deep learning accelerators based on readily available device technologies.
The standard assumption in reinforcement learning (RL) is that agents observe feedback for their actions immediately. However, in practice feedback is often observed in delay. This paper studies online learning in episodic Markov decision process (MDP) with unknown transitions, adversarially changing costs, and unrestricted delayed bandit feedback. More precisely, the feedback for the agent in episode $k$ is revealed only in the end of episode $k + d^k$, where the delay $d^k$ can be changing over episodes and chosen by an oblivious adversary. We present the first algorithms that achieve near-optimal $\sqrt{K + D}$ regret, where $K$ is the number of episodes and $D = \sum_{k=1}^K d^k$ is the total delay, significantly improving upon the best known regret bound of $(K + D)^{2/3}$.
{We investigate the communications design in a multiagent system (MAS) in which agents cooperate to maximize the averaged sum of discounted one-stage rewards of a collaborative task. Due to the limited communication rate between the agents, each agent should efficiently represent its local observation and communicate an abstract version of the observations to improve the collaborative task performance. We first show that this problem is equivalent to a form of rate-distortion problem which we call task-based information compression (TBIC). We then introduce the state-aggregation for information compression algorithm (SAIC) to solve the formulated TBIC problem. It is shown that SAIC is able to achieve near-optimal performance in terms of the achieved sum of discounted rewards. The proposed algorithm is applied to a rendezvous problem and its performance is compared with several benchmarks. Numerical experiments confirm the superiority of the proposed algorithm.
Given a probability distribution $\mathcal{D}$ over the non-negative integers, a $\mathcal{D}$-repeat channel acts on an input symbol by repeating it a number of times distributed as $\mathcal{D}$. For example, the binary deletion channel ($\mathcal{D}=Bernoulli$) and the Poisson repeat channel ($\mathcal{D}=Poisson$) are special cases. We say a $\mathcal{D}$-repeat channel is square-integrable if $\mathcal{D}$ has finite first and second moments. In this paper, we construct explicit codes for all square-integrable $\mathcal{D}$-repeat channels with rate arbitrarily close to the capacity, that are encodable and decodable in linear and quasi-linear time, respectively. We also consider possible extensions to the repeat channel model, and illustrate how our construction can be extended to an even broader class of channels capturing insertions, deletions, and substitutions. Our work offers an alternative, simplified, and more general construction to the recent work of Rubinstein (arXiv:2111.00261), who attains similar results to ours in the cases of the deletion channel and the Poisson repeat channel. It also improves on the decoding failure probability of the polar codes constructions of Tal et al. for the deletion channel (ISIT 2019) and certain insertion/deletion/substitution channels (arXiv:2102.02155). Our techniques follow closely the approaches of Guruswami and Li (IEEEToIT 2019) and Con and Shpilka (IEEEToIT 2020); what sets apart our work is that we show that a capacity-achieving code for the channels in question can be assumed to have an "approximate balance" in the frequency of zeros and ones of all sufficiently long substrings of all codewords. This allows us to attain near-capacity-achieving codes in a general setting. We consider this "approximate balance" result to be of independent interest, as it can be cast in much greater generality than repeat channels.
We consider the problem of coded distributed computing using polar codes. The average execution time of a coded computing system is related to the error probability for transmission over the binary erasure channel in recent work by Soleymani, Jamali and Mahdavifar, where the performance of binary linear codes is investigated. In this paper, we focus on polar codes and unveil a connection between the average execution time and the scaling exponent $\mu$ of the family of codes. The scaling exponent has emerged as a central object in the finite-length characterization of polar codes, and it captures the speed of convergence to capacity. In particular, we show that (i) the gap between the normalized average execution time of polar codes and that of optimal MDS codes is $O(n^{-1/\mu})$, and (ii) this upper bound can be improved to roughly $O(n^{-1/2})$ by considering polar codes with large kernels. We conjecture that these bounds could be improved to $O(n^{-2/\mu})$ and $O(n^{-1})$, respectively, and provide a heuristic argument as well as numerical evidence supporting this view.
Promoting behavioural diversity is critical for solving games with non-transitive dynamics where strategic cycles exist, and there is no consistent winner (e.g., Rock-Paper-Scissors). Yet, there is a lack of rigorous treatment for defining diversity and constructing diversity-aware learning dynamics. In this work, we offer a geometric interpretation of behavioural diversity in games and introduce a novel diversity metric based on \emph{determinantal point processes} (DPP). By incorporating the diversity metric into best-response dynamics, we develop \emph{diverse fictitious play} and \emph{diverse policy-space response oracle} for solving normal-form games and open-ended games. We prove the uniqueness of the diverse best response and the convergence of our algorithms on two-player games. Importantly, we show that maximising the DPP-based diversity metric guarantees to enlarge the \emph{gamescape} -- convex polytopes spanned by agents' mixtures of strategies. To validate our diversity-aware solvers, we test on tens of games that show strong non-transitivity. Results suggest that our methods achieve much lower exploitability than state-of-the-art solvers by finding effective and diverse strategies.