2008/05/15 by Pulkit Grover, Grover, Pulkit, Anant Sahai +1
Computer Science · Engineering · #Advanced MIMO Systems Optimization #Advanced Wireless Communication Techniques #Error Correcting Code Techniques #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Information Theory (cs.IT)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0805.2423
openalex publication_date 2008/05/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
A green code attempts to minimize the total energy per-bit required to communicate across a noisy channel. The classical information-theoretic approach neglects the energy expended in processing the data at the encoder and the decoder and only minimizes the energy required for transmissions. Since there is no cost associated with using more degrees of freedom, the traditionally optimal strategy is to communicate at rate zero. In this work, we use our recently proposed model for the power consumed by iterative message passing. Using generalized sphere-packing bounds on the decoding power, we find lower bounds on the total energy consumed in the transmissions and the decoding, allowing for freedom in the choice of the rate. We show that contrary to the classical intuition, the rate for green codes is bounded away from zero for any given error probability. In fact, as the desired bit-error probability goes to zero, the optimizing rate for our bounds converges to 1.