Capacity of Private Linear Computation for Coded Databases

Abstract: We consider the problem of private linear computation (PLC) in a distributed storage system. In PLC, a user wishes to compute a linear combination of $f$ messages stored in noncolluding databases while revealing no information about the coefficients of the desired linear combination to the databases. In extension of our previous work we employ linear codes to encode the information on the databases. We show that the PLC capacity, which is the ratio of the desired linear function size and the total amount of downloaded information, matches the maximum distance separable (MDS) coded capacity of private information retrieval for a large class of linear codes that includes MDS codes. In particular, the proposed converse is valid for any number of messages and linear combinations, and the capacity expression depends on the rank of the coefficient matrix obtained from all linear combinations.