On the Interactive Capacity of Finite-State Protocols

Abstract: The interactive capacity of a noisy channel is the highest possible rate at which arbitrary interactive protocols can be simulated reliably over the channel. Determining the interactive capacity is notoriously difficult, and the best known lower bounds are far below the associated Shannon capacity, which serves as a trivial (and also generally the best known) upper bound. This paper considers the more restricted setup of simulating finite-state protocols. It is shown that all two-state protocols, as well as rich families of arbitrary finite-state protocols, can be simulated at the Shannon capacity, establishing the interactive capacity for those families of protocols.