Byzantine Multiple Access Channels-Part II: Communication With Adversary Identification

• Published in: IEEE transactions on information theory 2025-01, Vol.71 (1), p.23-60
• Main Authors: Sangwan, Neha, Bakshi, Mayank, Dey, Bikash Kumar, Prabhakaran, Vinod M.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Authentication; Channel capacity; Codes; Computer science; Decoding; Encoding; Hamming weight; identification; Multiple access; Receivers; Reliability; Reliability theory
• ISSN: 0018-9448; 1557-9654
• DOI: 10.1109/TIT.2024.3469111

We introduce the problem of determining the identity of a byzantine user (internal adversary) in a communication system. We consider a two-user discrete memoryless multiple access channel where either user may deviate from the prescribed behaviour. Since small deviations may be indistinguishable from the effects of channel noise, it might be overly restrictive to attempt to detect all deviations. In our formulation, we only require detecting deviations which impede the decoding of the non-deviating user's message. When neither user deviates, correct decoding is required. When one user deviates, the decoder must either output a pair of messages of which the message of the non-deviating user is correct or identify the deviating user. The users and the receiver do not share any randomness. The results include a characterization of the set of channels where communication is feasible, and an inner and outer bound on the capacity region. We also show that whenever the rate region has non-empty interior, the capacity region is same as the capacity region under randomized encoding, where each user shares independent randomness with the receiver. We also give an outer bound for this randomized coding capacity region.