Munich Lectures on Information Theory (MLIT)

We are happy to welcome you to the Munich Lectures on Information Theory (MLIT) on April 1, 2016. The lectures are open to the public and no registration is required.

Georg Böcherer, Gerhard Kramer

Location

  • 2:30pm, April 1, 2016
  • N4, 2nd floor, seminar room N2408

Program

Information Leakage in Security Systems Based on SRAM-PUFs

Frans Willems

In this lecture we discuss hardware-intrinsic security systems based on physical unclonable functions (PUFs) realised by static random-access memory (SRAM). We first focus on the fingerprinting behaviour of SRAM during power-up. We then connect this behaviour with the notion of secret-key capacity (Mauer (1993), Ahlswede & Csiszar (1993)). In the unbiased case the SRAM can be modelled as a binary symmetric channel and the secret key capacity can be achieved in principle with the XOR-method and linear error-correcting codes. We first study the multiple-observation statistics of SRAM and discuss a notion of symmetry in multiple-observation settings. This notion allows us to investigate, for the XOR-method, the information leakage, i.e., the information that the helper data contains about the secret key. We show that in multiple-enrolment scenario’s with new keys there is no leakage, and even if the same key is enrolled several times the leakage is zero, if the SRAM satisfies our notion of symmetry. Leakage however can occur if two keys are enrolled on the same SRAM with different codes, producing two helper data streams. We show this by an example. Then we turn to biased SRAM. We show that bias can result in information leakage, and then describe a method that can be used to avoid leakage.

Work funded by Eurostars project PATRIOT, No 852904.

On belief propagation decoding of polar codes

A. Elkelesh, M. Ebada, S. Cammerer, Stephan ten Brink

We improve the performance of the Belief Propagation (BP) decoder for finite length polar codes using a short length "auxiliary" LDPC code, to protect the information bits transmitted on the semi-polarized channels. This is similar to adding a Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) code when a Successive Cancellation List (SCL) decoder is used. We use the concept of "scattered" EXIT charts to design such short-lentgh LDPC codes, to provide a significant improvement in terms of BER of the polar BP decoder.

Frans Willems

Frans M.J. Willems was born in Stein, The Netherlands, on June 26, 1954. He received the M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, and the Ph.D. degree from the Catholic University of Louvain, Louvain, Belgium, in 1979 and 1982 respectively. From 1979 to 1982 he was a research assistant at the Catholic University of Louvain. Since 1982, he is a staff member at the Electrical Engineering Department of Eindhoven University of Technology. His research contributions are in the areas of multi-user information theory and noiseless source coding. Dr. Willems received the Marconi Young Scientist Award in 1982. From 1988 to 1990, he served as Associate Editor for Shannon Theory for the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. He is co-recipient of the 1996 IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Award. From 1998 to 2000 he was a member of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Information Theory Society. Since 1999 he is connected to Philips Research Laboratories as an advisor. From 2001 to 2004 he served as an Associate Editor for Information Theory for the European Transactions on Telecommunications. Dr. Willems is a Fellow of the IEEE since 2005.

Stephan ten Brink

Stephan ten Brink joined the Institute of Telecommunications in July 2013. Prior to his assignment at the University of Stuttgart, he worked in various positions in industry, research and development. Prior assignments include one year researcher at Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies in Swindon, U.K. (mobile wireless communications, GSM, UMTS), 5 years as researcher at Bell Laboratories in Holmdel, New Jersey, U.S.A. (channel coding and signal detection for multiple antenna communications), 7 years at Realtek Semiconductor Corp. in Irvine, California, U.S.A., as director of wireless ASIC development (WLAN, UWB baseband), 3 years at Bell Laboratories, Alcatel-Lucent in Stuttgart, Germany, as department head in wireless physical layer research (signal processing and channel coding for wireless and optical communication systems; LTE, long-haul). The common theme across his appointments is in digital modem design, particularly signal processing and channel coding for communications, for improving data rate, receiver sensitivity, and power efficiency. He is member of the VDE/ITG, and Senior Member of the IEEE Communications and Information Theory Society. In October 2013, he was elected to the Board of Governors of the IEEE Information Theory Society.

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