Typically, locally repairable codes (LRCs) and regenerating codes have been studied independently of each other, and it has not been clear how the parameters of one relate to those of the other. In this paper, a novel connection between locally repairable codes and exact regenerating codes is established. Via this connection, locally repairable codes are interpreted as exact regenerating codes. Further, some of these codes are shown to perform better than time-sharing codes between minimum bandwidth regenerating and minimum storage regenerating codes.

In this paper, locally repairable codes with all-symbol locality are studied. Methods to modify already existing codes are presented. It is also shown that, with high probability, a random matrix with a few extra columns guaranteeing the locality property is a generator matrix for a locally repairable code with a good minimum distance. The proof of the result provides a constructive method to find locally repairable codes. Finally, constructions of three infinite classes of optimal vector-linear locally repairable codes over a small alphabet independent of the code size are given.

This paper provides a link between matroid theory and locally repairable codes (LRCs) that are either linear or more generally almost affine. Using this link, new results on both LRCs and matroid theory are derived. The parameters (n, k, d, r, δ) of LRCs are generalized to matroids, and the matroid analog of the generalized singleton bound by Gopalan et al. for linear LRCs is given for matroids. It is shown that the given bound is not tight for certain classes of parameters, implying a nonexistence result for the corresponding locally repairable almost affine codes that are coined perfect in this paper. Constructions of classes of matroids with a large span of the parameters (n, k, d, r, δ) and the corresponding local repair sets are given. Using these matroid constructions, new LRCs are constructed with prescribed parameters. The existence results on linear LRCs and the nonexistence results on almost affine LRCs given in this paper strengthen the nonexistence and existence results on perfect linear LRCs given by Song et al.

This paper investigates the design of codes for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) multiple access channel (MAC). If a joint maximum-likelihood decoding is to be performed at the receiver, then every MIMO-MAC code can be regarded as a single-user code, where the minimum determinant criterion proposed by Tarokh et al. is useful for designing such codes and for upper bounding the maximum pairwise error probability (PEP), whenever the codes are of finite rate and operate in finite signal-to-noise ratio range. Unlike the case of single-user codes where the minimum determinant can be lower bounded by a fixed constant as code-rate grows, it was proved by Lahtonen et al. that the minimum determinant of MIMO-MAC codes decays as a function of the rates. This decay phenomenon is further investigated in this paper, and upper bounds for the decays of minimum determinant corresponding to each error event are provided. Lower bounds for the optimal decay are established and are based on an explicit construction of codes using algebraic number theory and Diophantine approximation. For some error profiles, the constructed codes are shown to meet the aforementioned upper bounds, hence they are optimal finite-rate codes in terms of PEPs associated with such error events. An asymptotic diversity-multiplexing gain tradeoff (DMT) analysis of the proposed codes is also given. It is shown that these codes are DMT optimal when the values of multiplexing gains are small.

In this paper we provide a link between matroid theory and locally repairable codes (LRCs) that are almost affine. The parameters (n, k, d, r) of LRCs are generalized to matroids. A bound on the parameters (n, k, d, r), similar to the bound in [P. Gopalan et al., “On the locality of codeword symbols,” IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory] for linear LRCs, is given for matroids. We prove that the given bound is not tight for a certain class of parameters, which implies a non-existence result for a certain class of optimal locally repairable almost affine codes. Constructions of optimal LRCs over small finite fields were stated as an open problem in [I. Tamo et al., “Optimal locally repairable codes and connections to matroid theory”, 2013 IEEE ISIT]. In this paper optimal LRCs which do not require a large field are constructed for certain classes of parameters.

In this paper, distributed storage systems with exact repair are studied. Constructions for exact-regenerating codes between the minimum storage regenerating (MSR) and the minimum bandwidth regenerating (MBR) points are given. To the best of our knowledge, no previous construction of exact-regenerating codes between MBR and MSR points is done except in the works by Tian et al. and Sasidharan et al. In contrast to their works, the methods used here are elementary. In this paper, it is shown that in the case that the parameters \(n\) , \(k\) , and \(d\) are close to each other, the given construction is close to optimal when comparing with the known functional repair capacity. This is done by showing that when the distances of the parameters \(n\) , \(k\) , and \(d\) are fixed but the actual values approach to infinity, the fraction of the performance of constructed codes with exact repair and the known capacity of codes with functional repair, approaches to one. Also, a simple variation of the constructed codes with almost the same performance is given. Also some bounds for the capacity of exact-repairing codes are given. These bounds illustrate the relationships between storage codes with different parameters.

The capacity of heterogeneous distributed storage systems under repair dynamics is studied. Examples of these systems include peer-to-peer storage clouds, wireless, and Internet caching systems. Nodes in a heterogeneous system can have different storage capacities and different repair bandwidths. Lower and upper bounds on the system capacity are given. These bounds depend on either the average resources per node, or on a detailed knowledge of the node characteristics. Moreover, the case in which nodes may be compromised by an eavesdropper is addressed and bounds on the secrecy capacity of the system are derived. One implication of these new results is that symmetric repair maximizes the capacity of a homogeneous system, which justifies the model widely used in the literature.

In this paper we study distributed storage systems with exact repair. We give a construction for regenerating codes between the minimum storage regenerating (MSR) and the minimum bandwidth regenerating (MBR) points and show that in the case that the parameters n, k, and d are close to each other our constructions are close to optimal when comparing to the known capacity when only functional repair is required. We do this by showing that when the distances of the parameters n, k, and d are fixed but the actual values approach to infinity, the fraction of the performance of our codes with exact repair and the known capacity of codes with functional repair approaches to one.

The capacity of heterogeneous distributed storage systems under repair dynamics is studied. Examples of these systems include peer-to-peer storage clouds, wireless, and Internet caching systems. Nodes in a heterogeneous system can have different storage capacities and different repair bandwidths. Lower and upper bounds on the system capacity are given. These bounds depend on either the average resources per node, or on a detailed knowledge of the node characteristics. Moreover, the case in which nodes may be compromised by an adversary (passive or active) is addressed and bounds on the secure capacity of the system are derived. One implication of these new results is that symmetric repair maximizes the capacity of a homogeneous system, which justifies the model widely used in the literature.

This paper provides a general construction method for multiple-input multiple-output multiple access channel codes (MIMO MAC codes) that have so called generalized full rank property. The achieved constructions give a positive answer to the question whether it is generally possible to reach the so called pigeon hole bound, that is an upper bound for the decay of determinants of MIMO-MAC channel codes.