Alice and Bob want to run a protocol over a noisy channel, where a certain number of bits are flipped adversarially. Several results take a protocol requiring @math bits of noise-free communication and make it robust over such a channel. In a recent breakthrough result, Haeupler described an algorithm that sends a number of bits that is conjectured to be near optimal in such a model. However, his algorithm critically requires @math knowledge of the number of bits that will be flipped by the adversary. We describe an algorithm requiring no such knowledge. If an adversary flips @math bits, our algorithm sends @math bits in expectation and succeeds with high probability in @math . It does so without any @math knowledge of @math . Assuming a conjectured lower bound by Haeupler, our result is optimal up to logarithmic factors. Our algorithm critically relies on the assumption of a private channel. We show that privacy is necessary when the amount of noise is unknown.
The seminal work of Schulman @cite_3 @cite_12 overcame these obstacles by describing a deterministic method for simulating interactive protocols on noisy channels with only a constant-factor increase in the total communication complexity. This work spurred vigorous interest in the area (see @cite_16 for an excellent survey).
@cite_16 @cite_12 @cite_3
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We highlight some recent progress and challenges in the area of interactive coding and information complexity. Communication is critical to distributed computing, parallel computing, or any situation in which automata interact-hence its significance as a resource in computation. In view of the likelihood of errors occurring in a lengthy interaction, it is desirable to incorporate this possibility in the model of communication. The author relates the noisy channel and the standard (noise less channel) complexities of a communication problem by establishing a 'two-way' or interactive analogue of Shanon's coding theorem: every noiseless channel protocol can be simulated by a private-coin noisy channel protocol whose time bound is proportional to the original (noiseless) time bound and inversely proportional to the capacity of the channel, while the protocol errs with vanishing probability. The method involves simulating the original protocol while implementing a hierarchical system of progress checks which ensure that errors of any magnitude in the simulation are, with high probability, rapidly eliminated. >