Hierarchical Joint Source-Channel Coding with Constrained Information Leakage

2026-04-23

AI Summary

This work addresses the challenges of information leakage and distortion constraints in the first-stage reconstruction of hierarchical joint source-channel coding, as well as performance disparities arising from side information of varying quality. To reconcile privacy preservation with transmission efficiency, the paper proposes a two-stage coding scheme that integrates a side information quality classification model, rate-distortion theory, and secrecy coding techniques. It systematically characterizes, for the first time, the fundamental trade-off between information leakage and distortion, establishes necessary and sufficient conditions for the achievability of arbitrary distortion-leakage triples $(D_1, D_2, L)$, and derives the conditions under which channel capacity is attainable subject to leakage constraints. These results collectively define a general achievable region and capacity boundary for this setting.

Technology Category

• Machine Learning: Information Theory
• Constraint Satisfaction and Optimization: Distributed CSP/Optimization
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Neural Spike Coding

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Applications of cryptography
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: User privacy protection in personalized systems
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Incentives in network design for Web infrastructures and ecosystems

Abstract

This paper studies the hierarchical joint source-channel coding with information leakage constraint in the first-phase reconstruction and distortion constraints. The receiver's access to the data varies and is evaluated by the quality of the side information. Due to the consideration of channel capacity limitation or the efficiency of the system performance, the encoder may send some additional information in Phase 1 that can only be decoded in Phase 2 with higher-quality side information. While this can optimize the overall performance, the additional information causes excessive information leakage. We provide general inner and outer bounds for the conditions such that a given distortion-leakage pair $(D_1,D_2,L)$ is achievable, together with a capacity-achieving condition.

Problem

• Hierarchical joint source-channel coding
• Information leakage
• Distortion constraint
• Side information
• Achievability

Innovation

• hierarchical joint source-channel coding
• information leakage constraint
• side information quality
• distortion-leakage tradeoff
• achievable region