Abelian Varieties in Coding and Cryptography
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IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter Vol. 61, No. 1, March 2011 Editor: Tracey Ho ISSN 1045-2362 Editorial committee: Helmut Bölcskei, Giuseppe Caire, Meir Feder, Joerg Kliewer, Anand Sarwate, and Andy Singer President’s Column Giuseppe Caire I am deeply honored to serve as your Society too often forgotten by many politicians and peo- president for 2011. I’d like to begin with ac- ple with responsibilities around the world. On knowledging my recent predecessors, Frank the other hand, we have a lot of work to do and Kschischang (Junior Past President) and Andrea we must be proactive in facing the challenges Goldsmith (Senior Past President), as well as that the future is putting in front of us. Dave Forney, who has offi cially ended his ser- vice as an offi cer of the IT Society on December While our Information Theory Transactions 31st, 2010, after a long and perhaps unmatched continues to rank at the top of the ISI Journal history of leadership and guidance, that stands Citation Report among all journals in Electri- as a reference for all of us. Under their lead, the cal and Electronic Engineering and Computer IT Society has sailed through some signifi cant Science in total citations, and fi rst among all storms, such as an unprecedented economic re- journals in Electrical Engineering, Computer cession, causing turmoil for IEEE fi nances, and a Science and Applied Mathematics according number of sad events, including the premature to the Eigenfactor tm score, the “sub-to-pub” passing of Shannon Lecturer Rudolf Ahlswede time (i.e., the length of the time between fi rst and other notables. Thanks to their commitment and vision, submission and publication of a paper) remains a concern. our Society is very much alive and kicking, we have healthy Some important steps have been taken in order to correct this reserves and strong income, the membership downtrend has problem without sacrifi cing the quality of our Transactions, been reversed, we have an outstanding Society website that which is ultimately our most cherished value. I have im- has become a very valuable tool for membership activities mense trust in our recently appointed EiC, Helmut Bölcskei, and visibility to the outside world, and we have put in place and in the newly created Executive Editorial Board, consist- a number of highly innovative initiatives. These include the ing of Dave Forney, Shlomo Shamai, Alexander Vardy and Student Committee, the Outreach Committee, WITHITS, the Sergio Verdú. Under their leadership, I am confi dent that the Distinguished Lecturers Program, the Annual School of In- sub-to-pub time will be reduced to more acceptable num- formation Theory, the ever-growing posting of preprints on bers, in line with other comparable IEEE journals. While the ArXiv, and the ISIT Student Paper Award. Such initiatives transition to Scholar One, effective as of September 2010, is a have successfully passed the beta-testing phase and have be- fi rst step in this direction, we can achieve this ambitious goal come pillars of our Society activity. only if our collective sense of shared responsibility is further strengthened and we all feel committed to provide timely Also, I would like to acknowledge my outstanding team and high-quality reviews. of volunteer offi cers, Muriel Médard (First VP), Gerhard Kramer (Second VP), Nihar Jindal (Treasurer) and Natasha Looking at a broader picture, it is useful to consider what Devroye (Secretary), who will share with me the burden of Information Theory has achieved and where it is heading. running the Society in 2011; all standing Committee Chairs In the past few years, we have witnessed a period of vibrant and members (it would be too long to mention them explic- new discoveries. Decades-long open problems have been itly, but please have a look at http://www.itsoc.org/people); solved, either exactly or via good engineering approxima- the Information Theory Society Distinguished Lecturers tions. The mathematical techniques that form the founda- (http://www.itsoc.org/people/committees/dlp); and all IT tion of our discipline, such as random coding, superposition Society Chapter volunteers (http://www.itsoc.org/people/ coding, successive interference cancellation, lattice coding chapters). and quantization, binning (or hashing), linear and non-linear precoding, opportunistic scheduling and many more, are now Given the excellent state of the Information Theory Society, my main goal for 2011 will be “do no harm”, a golden rule sadly continued on page 3 2 From the Editor Tracey Ho Dear IT Society members, seemingly complicated technical concepts in the simplest possible way, reducing each to its essence while not sacrifi c- In this fi rst issue of 2011, we welcome our ing scope and rigor. new IT Society President Giuseppe Caire, who shares his thoughts on our society’s As a reminder, announcements, news and events intend- strengths and successes, and remaining ed for both the printed newsletter and the website, such challenges to be tackled. We also, with sad- as award announcements, calls for nominations and up- ness, pay tribute to four distinguished col- coming conferences, can be submitted jointly at the IT leagues in information theory who passed Society website http://www.itsoc.org/, using the quick away recently: Rudolf Ahlswede, Freder- links “Share News” and “Announce an Event”. Articles ick Jelinek, Joseph Ovseyevich and Ray- and columns that do not fall into the above categories mond J. Solomonoff. On a happier note, should be e-mailed to me at [email protected], with a sub- we congratulate the winners of prestigious ject line that includes the words “IT newsletter”. The deadlines for the next few IEEE medals and awards, and the newly issues are: elevated IEEE Fellows from our society. And we recap the plenary talks by Ram Issue Deadline Zamir at ISIT 2010 in Austin and Ian Blake June 2011 April 10, 2011 at ITW 2010 in Dublin. September 2011 July 10, 2011 December 2011 October 10, 2011 We also have an exciting new column on “Teaching IT”. This was inspired by Please submit plain text, LaTeX or Word source fi les; do not worry about fonts or layout Sergio Verdu’s “Teaching IT” Shannon as this will be taken care of by IEEE layout specialists. Electronic photos and graphics lecture, so it is fi tting that he has written should be in high resolution and sent as separate fi les. the inaugural article, on teaching lossless data compression. As envisioned by Ezio I look forward to your contributions and suggestions for future issues of the newsletter. Biglieri, who fi rst raised the idea, and the newsletter editorial committee, the col- Tracey Ho umn focuses on the challenge of teaching Table of Contents President’s Column . 1 IEEE From the Editor . 2 Information Theory IT Society Members Win IEEE Medals and Awards . 4 Society Newsletter 2010 Newly Elevated IEEE Fellows . 5 IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter In Memoriam, Tribute to Rudolf Ahlswede (USPS 360-350) is published quarterly by the Frederick Jelinek, Joseph Ovseyevich, Raymond J. Solomonoff . 7 Information Theory Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. The Historian’s Column. 17 Headquarters: 3 Park Avenue, 17th Floor, New York, NY 10016-5997. Teaching Lossless Data Compression . 18 Cost is $1.00 per member per year (included Can Structure Beat Random? – The Story of Lattice Codes. 20 in Society fee) for each member of the Information Theory Society. Printed in the Abelian Varieties in Coding and Cryptography . 30 U.S.A. Periodicals postage paid at New York, TM NY and at additional mailing offices. Golomb’s Puzzle Column Proofs With Integers as Exponents . 35 Postmaster: Send address changes to IEEE Golomb’s Puzzle ColumnTM Derangements and Beyond Solutions . 36 Information Theory Society Newsletter, IEEE, 445 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, NJ 08854. ArXiv Postings Exceed 100/Month . 37 © 2011 IEEE. Information contained in this IEEE Information Theory Society newsletter may be copied without permission Paper Award Call for Nominations. 38 provided that the copies are not made or dis- tributed for direct commercial advantage, and Nominations for IEEE Medals and Recognitions . 38 the title of the publication and its date appear. IEEE prohibits discrimination, harassment, and bullying. For Call for Papers . 39 more information, visit http://www.ieee.org/web/aboutus/ whatis/policies/p9-26.html. Conference Calendar . 44 IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter M a rc h 2 011 3 President’s Column continued from page 1 at the heart of core technology developments, and are migrating same brilliant simplicity, broad applicability, and mathematical into new systems and communication standards. Central to this rigor that characterized the early days of Information Theory. recent development is the concept of networks. It is by now clear that the single-source single-link problem has arrived at a point Now, as the IT Society president for 2011, a legitimate question where the marginal improvement, in most settings of engineering that I ask myself is what the IT Society can do in order to foster signifi cance, is relatively small. In contrast, as soon as the prob- the growth of our fi eld. I believe that our strongest priority is to lems are enriched with network aspects, such as distributed and invest in the future generations of researchers, i.e., in our Ph.D. correlated sources, interference and intermediate nodes that are students, and at the same time to offer visibility to such outstand- neither sources nor destinations, the distance between theory and ing students in order to compete for academic and leading in- practice is still large, and the margins for dramatic improvements dustrial research positions around the world. In this respect, the are potentially huge.