Function Computation under Privacy, Secrecy, Distortion, and Communication Constraints

The problem of reliable function computation is extended by imposing privacy, secrecy, and storage constraints on a remote source whose noisy measurements are observed by multiple parties. The main additions to the classic function computation problem include (1) privacy leakage to an eavesdropper is measured with respect to the remote source rather than the transmitting terminals’ observed sequences; (2) the information leakage to a fusion center with respect to the remote source is considered a new privacy leakage metric; (3) the function computed is allowed to be a distorted version of the target function, which allows the storage rate to be reduced compared to a reliable function computation scenario, in addition to reducing secrecy and privacy leakages; (4) two transmitting node observations are used to compute a function. Inner and outer bounds on the rate regions are derived for lossless and lossy single-function computation with two transmitting nodes, which recover previous results in the literature. For special cases, including invertible and partially invertible functions, and degraded measurement channels, exact lossless and lossy rate regions are characterized, and one exact region is evaluated as an example scenario.

Function Computation Under Privacy, Secrecy, Distortion, and Communication Constraints

The problem of reliable function computation is extended by imposing privacy, secrecy, and storage constraints on a remote source whose noisy measurements are observed by multiple parties. The main additions to the classic function computation problem include 1) privacy leakage to an eavesdropper is measured with respect to the remote source rather than the transmitting terminals’ observed sequences; 2) the information leakage to a fusion center with respect to the remote source is considered as a new privacy leakage metric; 3) the function computed is allowed to be a distorted version of the target function, which allows to reduce the storage rate as compared to a reliable function computation scenario in addition to reducing secrecy and privacy leakages; 4) two transmitting node observations are used to compute a function. Inner and outer bounds on the rate regions are derived for lossless and lossy single-function computation with two transmitting nodes, which recover previous results in the literature. For special cases that include invertible and partially-invertible functions, and degraded measurement channels, exact lossless and lossy rate regions are characterized, and one exact region is evaluated for an example scenario.

A Moral Stretch? US–Tariff Measures and the Public Morals Exception in WTO Law

The ‘public morals’ exception remains a key aspect of the international trade system; however, its outer bounds have never been precisely defined. This question became pertinent in the US–Tariff Measures panel report, which expansively read the exception to justify a wide range of economic interests, including prohibitions on economic espionage, anti-competitive behaviour, and the regulation of government takings. This note challenges the panel's interpretation, arguing that it is flawed and essentially amounts to a factual standard of review. It proposes an alternative approach to public morals review, which involves an objective standard of review of facts and law, while providing adequate deference to Members’ own factual determinations. It further engages with the issue of extraterritoriality, defending an approach based on Members’ legislative jurisdiction as this strikes a balance between Members’ right to regulate trade for moral purposes and the interests of the international community.

Semidefinite programming hierarchies for constrained bilinear optimization

We give asymptotically converging semidefinite programming hierarchies of outer bounds on bilinear programs of the form $${\mathrm {Tr}}\big [H(D\otimes E)\big ]$$ Tr [ H ( D ⊗ E ) ] , maximized with respect to semidefinite constraints on D and E. Applied to the problem of approximate error correction in quantum information theory, this gives hierarchies of efficiently computable outer bounds on the success probability of approximate quantum error correction codes in any dimension. The first level of our hierarchies corresponds to a previously studied relaxation (Leung and Matthews in IEEE Trans Inf Theory 61(8):4486, 2015) and positive partial transpose constraints can be added to give a sufficient criterion for the exact convergence at a given level of the hierarchy. To quantify the worst case convergence speed of our sum-of-squares hierarchies, we derive novel quantum de Finetti theorems that allow imposing linear constraints on the approximating state. In particular, we give finite de Finetti theorems for quantum channels, quantifying closeness to the convex hull of product channels as well as closeness to local operations and classical forward communication assisted channels. As a special case this constitutes a finite version of Fuchs-Schack-Scudo’s asymptotic de Finetti theorem for quantum channels. Finally, our proof methods answer a question of Brandão and Harrow (Proceedings of the forty-fourth annual ACM symposium on theory of computing, STOC’12, p 307, 2012) by improving the approximation factor of de Finetti theorems with no symmetry from $$O(d^{k/2})$$ O ( d k / 2 ) to $${\mathrm {poly}}(d,k)$$ poly ( d , k ) , where d denotes local dimension and k the number of copies.

Union and Intersection Operators for Thick Ellipsoid State Enclosures: Application to Bounded-Error Discrete-Time State Observer Design

Thick ellipsoids were recently introduced by the authors to represent uncertainty in state variables of dynamic systems, not only in terms of guaranteed outer bounds but also in terms of an inner enclosure that belongs to the true solution set with certainty. Because previous work has focused on the definition and computationally efficient implementation of arithmetic operations and extensions of nonlinear standard functions, where all arguments are replaced by thick ellipsoids, this paper introduces novel operators for specifically evaluating quasi-linear system models with bounded parameters as well as for the union and intersection of thick ellipsoids. These techniques are combined in such a way that a discrete-time state observer can be designed in a predictor-corrector framework. Estimation results are presented for a combined observer-based estimation of state variables as well as disturbance forces and torques in the sense of an unknown input estimator for a hovercraft.

MISO Broadcast Channel under Unequal Link Coherence Times and Channel State Information

The broadcast channel may experience unequal link coherence times due to a number of factors including variation in node mobility or local scattering conditions. This means the block fading model for different links may have nonidentical block length, and the channel state information for the links may also not be identical. The faster the fading and the shorter the fading block length, the more often the link needs to be trained and estimated at the receiver, and the more likely that channel state information (CSI) is stale or unavailable at the transmitter. This paper investigates a MISO broadcast channel where some receivers experience longer coherence intervals and other receivers experience shorter coherence intervals and must estimate their receive-side CSI (CSIR) frequently. We consider a variety of transmit-side CSI (CSIT) conditions for the abovementioned model, including no CSIT, delayed CSIT, or hybrid CSIT. To investigate the degrees of freedom region, we employ interference alignment and beamforming along with a product superposition that allows simultaneous but noncontaminating transmission of pilots and data to different receivers. Outer bounds employ the extremal entropy inequality as well as a bounding of the performance of a discrete, memoryless, multiuser, multilevel broadcast channel. For several cases, inner and outer bounds are established that either partially meet, or the gap diminishes with increasing coherence times.