Secret key agreement for hypergraphical sources with limited total discussion

Abstract: This work considers the problem of multiterminal secret key agreement by limited total public discussion under the hypergraphical source model. The secrecy capacity as a function of the total discussion rate is completely characterized by a polynomial-time computable linear program. Compared to the existing solution for a particular hypergraphical source model called the pairwise independent network (PIN) model, the current result is a non-trivial extension as it applies to a strictly larger class of sources and a more general scenario involving helpers and wiretapper's side information. In particular, while the existing solution by tree-packing can be strictly suboptimal for the PIN model with helpers and the hypergraphical source model in general, we can show that decremental secret key agreement and linear network coding is optimal, resolving a previous conjecture in the affirmative. The converse is established by a single-letter upper bound on the secrecy capacity for discrete memoryless multiple sources and individual discussion rate constraints. The minimax optimization involved in the bound can be relaxed to give the best existing upper bounds on secrecy capacities such as the lamination bounds for hypergraphical sources, helper-set bound for general sources, the bound at asymptotically zero discussion rate via the multivariate G\'ac--K\"orner common information, and the lower bound on communication complexity via a multivariate extension of the Wyner common information. These reductions unify existing bounding techniques and reveal surprising connections between seemingly different information-theoretic notions. Further challenges are posed in this work along with a simple example of finite linear source where the current converse techniques fail even though the proposed achieving scheme remains optimal.