arXiv subjects

Nadim Ghaddar

Publications and source records attributed to Nadim Ghaddar.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Active MIMO Sensing With Exploration-Exploitation Tradeoff

This paper develops an active sensing framework for designing the transmit and receive beamformers of a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar system. In the proposed technique, the beamformers are adaptively designed in each sensing stage based on the measurements made in the previous sensing stages. The beamformers are determined by minimizing the Bayesian Cram{\'e}r-Rao bound (BCRB) for the estimation of the unknown sensing parameters at each stage via Lagrangian dual optimization. To address the exploration-exploitation tradeoff that is inherent to such an adaptive design, this paper proposes two variants of the BCRB optimization problem: an exploration-centric variant, that ensures that multiple orthogonal beamforming directions are probed in each sensing stage, and an exploitation-centric variant, that does not restrict the number of optimal beamformers. Each variant of the optimization problem is solved via an alternating optimization algorithm that alternates between solving for the transmit beamformers and solving for the receive beamformers. The algorithm is shown to converge to a stationary point provided that each optimization problem is solved to global optimality. Moreover, this paper studies each of the two BCRB optimization sub-problems in the Lagrangian dual domain and shows that despite the non-convexity, global optimality is guaranteed provided that certain sufficient conditions hold. The conditions pertain to the multiplicity of the eigenvalues of a specific direction matrix that can be analytically written in terms of the optimal dual variables. These conditions further imply the tightness of the semidefinite relaxation of the optimization problems. Simulation results demonstrate the benefits of the proposed BCRB-based design compared to state-of-the-art adaptive beamforming strategies.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2024

Low-Complexity Coding Techniques for Cloud Radio Access Networks

The problem of coding for the uplink and downlink of cloud radio access networks (C-RAN's) with $K$ users and $L$ relays is considered. It is shown that low-complexity coding schemes that achieve any point in the rate-fronthaul region of joint coding and compression can be constructed starting from at most $4(K+L)-2$ point-to-point codes designed for symmetric channels. This reduces the seemingly hard task of constructing good codes for C-RAN's to the much better understood task of finding good codes for single-user channels. To show this result, an equivalence between the achievable rate-fronthaul regions of joint coding and successive coding is established. Then, rate-splitting and quantization-splitting techniques are used to show that the task of achieving a rate-fronthaul point in the joint coding region can be simplified to that of achieving a corner point in a higher-dimensional C-RAN problem. As a by-product, some interesting properties of the rate-fronthaul region of joint decoding for uplink C-RAN's are also derived.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2024

Noisy Sorting Capacity

Sorting is the task of ordering $n$ elements using pairwise comparisons. It is well known that $m=Θ(n\log n)$ comparisons are both necessary and sufficient when the outcomes of the comparisons are observed with no noise. In this paper, we study the sorting problem when each comparison is incorrect with some fixed yet unknown probability $p$. Unlike the common approach in the literature which aims to minimize the number of pairwise comparisons $m$ to achieve a given desired error probability, we consider randomized algorithms with expected number of queries $\textsf{E}[M]$ and aim at characterizing the maximal sorting rate $\frac{n\log n}{\textsf{E}[M]}$ such that the ordering of the elements can be estimated with a vanishing error probability asymptotically. The maximal rate is referred to as the noisy sorting capacity. In this work, we derive upper and lower bounds on the noisy sorting capacity. The two lower bounds -- one for fixed-length algorithms and one for variable-length algorithms -- are established by combining the insertion sort algorithm with the well-known Burnashev--Zigangirov algorithm for channel coding with feedback. Compared with existing methods, the proposed algorithms are universal in the sense that they do not require the knowledge of $p$, while maintaining a strictly positive sorting rate. Moreover, we derive a general upper bound on the noisy sorting capacity, along with an upper bound on the maximal rate that can be achieved by sorting algorithms that are based on insertion sort.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2024

Noisy Computing of the Threshold Function

Let $\mathsf{TH}_k$ denote the $k$-out-of-$n$ threshold function: given $n$ input Boolean variables, the output is $1$ if and only if at least $k$ of the inputs are $1$. We consider the problem of computing the $\mathsf{TH}_k$ function using noisy readings of the Boolean variables, where each reading is incorrect with some fixed and known probability $p \in (0,1/2)$. As our main result, we show that it is sufficient to use $(1+o(1)) \frac{n\log \frac{m}{\delta}}{D_{\mathsf{KL}}(p \| 1-p)}$ queries in expectation to compute the $\mathsf{TH}_k$ function with a vanishing error probability $\delta = o(1)$, where $m\triangleq \min\{k,n-k+1\}$ and $D_{\mathsf{KL}}(p \| 1-p)$ denotes the Kullback-Leibler divergence between $\mathsf{Bern}(p)$ and $\mathsf{Bern}(1-p)$ distributions. Conversely, we show that any algorithm achieving an error probability of $\delta = o(1)$ necessitates at least $(1-o(1))\frac{(n-m)\log\frac{m}{\delta}}{D_{\mathsf{KL}}(p \| 1-p)}$ queries in expectation. The upper and lower bounds are tight when $m=o(n)$, and are within a multiplicative factor of $\frac{n}{n-m}$ when $m=\Theta(n)$. In particular, when $k=n/2$, the $\mathsf{TH}_k$ function corresponds to the $\mathsf{MAJORITY}$ function, in which case the upper and lower bounds are tight up to a multiplicative factor of two. Compared to previous work, our result tightens the dependence on $p$ in both the upper and lower bounds.

cs.DS↗

arXiv2023

A Lego-Brick Approach to Coding for Network Communication

Coding schemes for several problems in network information theory are constructed starting from point-to-point channel codes that are designed for symmetric channels. Given that the point-to-point codes satisfy certain properties pertaining to the rate, the error probability, and the distribution of decoded sequences, bounds on the performance of the coding schemes are derived and shown to hold irrespective of other properties of the codes. In particular, we consider the problems of lossless and lossy source coding, Slepian-Wolf coding, Wyner-Ziv coding, Berger-Tung coding, multiple description coding, asymmetric channel coding, Gelfand-Pinsker coding, coding for multiple access channels, Marton coding for broadcast channels, and coding for cloud radio access networks (C-RAN's). We show that the coding schemes can achieve the best known inner bounds for these problems, provided that the constituent point-to-point channel codes are rate-optimal. This would allow one to leverage commercial off-the-shelf codes for point-to-point symmetric channels in the practical implementation of codes over networks. Simulation results demonstrate the gain of the proposed coding schemes compared to existing practical solutions to these problems.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2023

Noisy Computing of the $\mathsf{OR}$ and $\mathsf{MAX}$ Functions

We consider the problem of computing a function of $n$ variables using noisy queries, where each query is incorrect with some fixed and known probability $p \in (0,1/2)$. Specifically, we consider the computation of the $\mathsf{OR}$ function of $n$ bits (where queries correspond to noisy readings of the bits) and the $\mathsf{MAX}$ function of $n$ real numbers (where queries correspond to noisy pairwise comparisons). We show that an expected number of queries of \[ (1 \pm o(1)) \frac{n\log \frac{1}δ}{D_{\mathsf{KL}}(p \| 1-p)} \] is both sufficient and necessary to compute both functions with a vanishing error probability $δ= o(1)$, where $D_{\mathsf{KL}}(p \| 1-p)$ denotes the Kullback-Leibler divergence between $\mathsf{Bern}(p)$ and $\mathsf{Bern}(1-p)$ distributions. Compared to previous work, our results tighten the dependence on $p$ in both the upper and lower bounds for the two functions.

cs.DS↗

arXiv2023

On the Optimal Bounds for Noisy Computing

We revisit the problem of computing with noisy information considered in Feige et al. 1994, which includes computing the OR function from noisy queries, and computing the MAX, SEARCH and SORT functions from noisy pairwise comparisons. For $K$ given elements, the goal is to correctly recover the desired function with probability at least $1-δ$ when the outcome of each query is flipped with probability $p$. We consider both the adaptive sampling setting where each query can be adaptively designed based on past outcomes, and the non-adaptive sampling setting where the query cannot depend on past outcomes. The prior work provides tight bounds on the worst-case query complexity in terms of the dependence on $K$. However, the upper and lower bounds do not match in terms of the dependence on $δ$ and $p$. We improve the lower bounds for all the four functions under both adaptive and non-adaptive query models. Most of our lower bounds match the upper bounds up to constant factors when either $p$ or $δ$ is bounded away from $0$, while the ratio between the best prior upper and lower bounds goes to infinity when $p\rightarrow 0$ or $p\rightarrow 1/2$. On the other hand, we also provide matching upper and lower bounds for the number of queries in expectation, improving both the upper and lower bounds for the variable-length query model.

cs.DS↗