Generalized Sphere Packing Bound

Abstract: Kulkarni and Kiyavash recently introduced a new method to establish upper bounds on the size of deletion-correcting codes. This method is based upon tools from hypergraph theory. The deletion channel is represented by a hypergraph whose edges are the deletion balls (or spheres), so that a deletion-correcting code becomes a matching in this hypergraph. Consequently, a bound on the size of such a code can be obtained from bounds on the matching number of a hypergraph. Classical results in hypergraph theory are then invoked to compute an upper bound on the matching number as a solution to a linear-programming problem. The method by Kulkarni and Kiyavash can be applied not only for the deletion channel but also for other error channels. This paper studies this method in its most general setup. First, it is shown that if the error channel is regular and symmetric then this upper bound coincides with the sphere packing bound and thus is called the generalized sphere packing bound. Even though this bound is explicitly given by a linear programming problem, finding its exact value may still be a challenging task. In order to simplify the complexity of the problem, we present a technique based upon graph automorphisms that in many cases reduces the number of variables and constraints in the problem. We then apply this method on specific examples of error channels. We start with the $Z$ channel and show how to exactly find the generalized sphere packing bound for this setup. Next studied is the non-binary limited magnitude channel both for symmetric and asymmetric errors, where we focus on the single-error case. We follow up on the deletion and grain-error channels and show how to improve upon the existing upper bounds for single deletion/error. Finally, we apply this method for projective spaces and find its generalized sphere packing bound for the single-error case.