Information Theory Laboratory
National Chiao Tung University

IT-Lab coffee-machine IT-Lab

photos of former location
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Contents

About Us

The Information Theory Lab was a small research laboratory in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at National Chiao Tung University (NCTU), Hsinchu, Taiwan. Originally located in Engineering Building IV, Lab 716A, the lab currently has no physical location anymore, but exists virtually. We concentrate our time, research, and teaching to the field of information theory which constitutes the theoretic physical foundation of any communication system.

Our mottos are as follows:

  • We proudly do interesting research in the field of information theory.
  • We proudly try to find new results that improve our understanding of communication systems.
  • We proudly do fundamental research even if not all our results are immediately applicable in practical systems.
  • We proudly offer courses that try to cover some fundamental topics in depth — we very much try to avoid teaching that only scratches on surfaces.
  • We proudly work in a Microsoft Windows- and Microsoft Office-free environment.
  • We proudly rely on LaTeX for a beautiful presentation of our results.

Research

Molecular Communication of Nano-Devices

When nano-devices try to communicate with each other or with some receiving station, it might not be possible to use traditional signal propagation via electromagnetic waves because, for example, the nano-device is too small to accommodate the minimal necessary antenna size or it does not possess enough power. Instead we propose a communication system that is based on the release time of chemical molecules that will travel in a fluid medium from a transmitter to a receiver. We investigate a channel model describing such communication and show new bounds on the channel capacity, i.e., the maximum amount of information that can be transmitted over this channel.

capacity of fluid channel


Finite Blocklength Communication

In his world-famous paper of 1948, Shannon defined channel capacity as the ultimate rate at which information can be transmitted over a communication channel with an error probability that will vanish if we allow the blocklength to get infinitely large. While this result is of tremendous theoretical importance, the reality of practical systems looks quite different: no communication system will tolerate an infinite delay caused by an extremely large blocklength, nor can it deal with the computational complexity of decoding such huge codewords. Hence, we have started investigating the fundamental limitations of communication systems if we only have a finite delay.

We propose optimal code designs for various binary channels with only a few codewords and of short blocklength.

optimal codes on binary channel


Optical Communication: Fiber or Air

Optical communication is the future of high-speed, high-volume, and high-security communication. While optical communication through fiber is the backbone of the worldwide internet, optical communication through air is also becoming increasingly popular because of its ease of installation, its high bandwidth and its security (it is very difficult to intercept such communication without detection).

We investigate several channel models that describe various different setups of optical communication: Poisson channel, free-space optical intensity channel, and an optical intensity channel with input-dependent Gaussian noise. We propose new bounds on the capacity of all models.

capacity of free-space optical intensity channel


MIMO Wireless Communication

The importance of wireless communication in our daily life needs not to be emphasized anymore. As we are heading towards the next generation mobile and wireless communication (4G) with once again higher bandwidth, having multiple-antenna devices also on the low-end consumer side will become inevitable. So MIMO fading channels have become a hot research topic.

Usually, the analysis of MIMO fading channels is done under two unrealistic, simplifying assumptions: firstly the fading is assumed to be Gaussian distributed, and secondly it is assumed that the receiver has access to a perfect reading of the current value of the fading. We are among the first who drop these impracticable simplifications and instead analyze MIMO fading channels for general distributions including memory and without the assumption of perfect channel state information at the receiver. Note that we do not restrict the receiver to try everything in its power to achieve such knowledge, however, any such effort is taken into account in our analysis and we also incorporate the fact that there always will be residual estimation and measurement errors.

Under these extremely general conditions we derive upper and lower bounds on capacity and are able to derive the capacity's exact value in the asymptotic high-power limit. We show that capacity grows only double-logarithmically in the SNR for such realistic channel models, which is in stark contrast to the overly optimistic logarithmic growth predicted by the simplified models assumed before.

capacity of Rician fading channel


Teaching

The IT-Lab has offered in the past the following courses:

  • Information Theory: This course introduces information theory and gives its most important results: lossless data compression and reliable communication over a noisy channel. The course is thought to be taken either in the first year of the graduate program or in the last year of undergraduate studies.
  • Advanced Topics in Information Theory: This is a continuation of the Information Theory course and covers more advanced topics in the field of information theory that are not taught in the basic introduction, like, e.g., distortion theory, types, and multiple user transmission systems.
  • Linear Algebra: This is a compulsory basic course in the first year of the undergraduate program giving a detailed introduction to linear algebra, in particular to matrices, vector spaces, and eigenvalues.
  • Probability: This is a compulsory basic course in the second year of the undergraduate program giving a detailed introduction to probability theory.
  • Introduction to Communication Systmes (Principles in Communication Engineering I): This is a basic course in the third year of the undergraduate program introducing the foundations of digital communication.
  • Principles in Communication Engineering II: This is a basic course in the third year of the undergraduate program giving an overview over the most important aspects of communication systems.

For more details about our present, previous, and future courses we refer to the teaching homepage of our lab. Note that for the two main courses Information Theory and Advanced Topics in Information Theory we offer our own lecture notes in book form.



Lab Members

stefan m. moser Name: Prof. Dr. Stefan M. Moser
Chinese Name: 莫詩台方
Origin: Liestal, Switzerland
Status: Head of the IT-Lab
E-mail:
Member since: August 2005
Research projects: channel capacity of various channels
Private interests/ Hobbies: skiing, badminton, bass-clarinet, clock and watch collection, traveling, reading, movies and theater
You may ask me questions about: Mac OS X, LaTeX, fading number, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, our coffee machine
 
 
lin hsuan-yin Name: Dr. Lin Hsuan-Yin
Chinese Name: 林玄寅
Origin: Miaoli, Taiwan
Status: Post-Doc
E-mail:
Member since: September 2007
Research project: Ph.D. thesis: Optimal Ultra-Small Block-Codes for Binary Input Discrete Memoryless Channels
Private interests/ Hobbies: American/Japanese/Korean dramas, training, cycling, badminton, traveling
You may ask me questions about: comics, LaTeX, MATLAB
 
 
kuo yuan-chu Name: Guo Yuan-Zhu
Chinese Name: 郭沅竹
Origin: Taipei, Taiwan
Status: Master's student of NCTU, second year
E-mail:
Member: November 2010 – July 2014
Research project: Master's thesis: The Asymptotic Capacity of Noncoherent Single-Input Multiple-Output Fading Channels with Memory and Feedback
Private interests/ Hobbies: Swimming, biking, waterpolo
You may ask me questions about: Bike traveling, fourteen months in Switzerland
 
 
lee ting-hsuan Name: Lee Ting-Hsuan
Chinese Name: 李庭萱
Origin: Taipei, Taiwan
Status: Graduated (M.Sc. NCTU)
E-mail:
Member: August 2012 – July 2013
Research project: Master's thesis: Molecular Communication in a Liquid: Bounds on the Capacity of the Additive Inverse Gaussian Noise Channel with Average and Peak Delay Constraints
Private interests/ Hobbies: Soap operas (Amerian episodes), computer games
You may ask me questions about: Soap operas (Amerian episodes)
 
 
huang yu-ming Name: Huang Yu-Ming
Chinese Name: 黃昱銘
Origin: Taipei, Taiwan
Status: Graduated (M.Sc. NCTU)
E-mail:
Member: August 2011 – July 2013
Research project: Master's thesis: The Fading Number of Multiple-Access General Fading Channels
Private interests/ Hobbies: Tennis, mahjong, cooking
You may ask me questions about: Tennis, mahjong
 
 
chang hui-ting Name: Chang Hui-Ting
Chinese Name: 張惠婷
Origin: Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Status: Graduated (M.Sc. NCTU)
E-mail:
Member: November 2009 – March 2013
Research project: Master's thesis: Molecular Communication in Fluid Media: Bounds on the Capacity of the Additive Inverse Gaussian Noise Channel
Private interests/ Hobbies: Biking, traveling, hiking, basketball
You may ask me questions about: Budget travel, basketball
 
 
chou yu-hsing Name: Chou Yu-Hsing
Chinese Name: 周育興
Origin: Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Status: Graduated (M.Sc. NCTU)
E-mail:
Member: August 2010 – August 2012
Research project: Master's thesis: The Fading Number of Multiple-Access Rician Fading Channel with Memory
Private interests/ Hobbies: Comics, classic and popular music, weight training
You may ask me questions about: Comics, music and computer games
 
 
chen wei-hsiang Name: Chen Wei-Hsiang
Chinese Name: 陳偉翔
Origin: Taichung, Taiwan
Status: Graduated (M.Sc. NCTU)
E-mail:
Member: September 2008 – August 2010
Research project: Master's thesis: On the Capacity of the Discrete-Time Poisson Channel
Private interests/ Hobbies: Basketball, Internet surfing
You may ask me questions about: Basketball skills
 
 
lin gu-rong Name: Lin Gu-Rong
Chinese Name: 林谷嶸
Origin: Houli, Taichung, Taiwan
Status: Graduated (M.Sc. NCTU)
E-mail:
Member: September 2007 – July 2009
Research project: Master's thesis: Capacity Analysis of Multiple-Access Rician Fading Channel
Private interests/ Hobbies: Watching baseball games, folk dances
You may ask me questions about: Basic skills and concepts about folk dances
 
 
lin ding-jie Name: Lin Ding-Jie
Chinese Name: 林鼎傑
Origin: Banqiao, Taipei, Taiwan
Status: Graduated (M.Sc. NCTU)
E-mail:
Member: September 2006 – July 2008
Research project: Master's thesis: On the Capacity of Free-Space Optical Communication Channels
Private interests/ Hobbies: playing basketball, watching TV, sleeping
You may ask me questions about: computer hardware, Warcraft
 
 
lai chien-sheng Name: Lai Chien-Sheng
Chinese Name: 賴建盛
Origin: Changhwa, Taiwan
Status: Graduated (M.Sc. Chalmers University, Sweden, B.Sc. NCTU)
E-mail:
Member: September 2006 – April 2007
Research project: Master's thesis: Capacity Simulations and Computations of Non-Coherent Fading Channels
Private interests/ Hobbies: movies, pop music, playing baseball & basketball
You may ask me questions about: NBA, life in Sweden, Matlab, audio/video codec
 
 

Photo-Galleries


-||-   _|_ _|_     /    __|__   Stefan M. Moser
[-]     --__|__   /__\    /__   Senior Scientist, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
_|_     -- --|-    _     /  /   Adjunct Professor, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan
/ \     []  \|    |_|   / \/    Web: https://moser-isi.ethz.ch/


Last modified: Tue Jul 12 13:49:18 CEST 2022