Novel Bounds on the Capacity of the Binary Deletion Channel

Abstract

We present novel bounds on the capacity of the independent and identically distributed binary deletion channel. Four upper bounds are obtained by providing the transmitter and the receiver with genie-aided information on suitably-defined random processes. Since some of the proposed bounds involve infinite series, we also introduce provable inequalities that lead to more manageable results. For most values of the deletion probability, these bounds improve the existing ones and significantly narrow the gap with the available lower bounds. Exploiting the same auxiliary processes, we also derive, as a by-product, a couple of very simple lower bounds on the channel capacity, which, for low values of the deletion probability, are almost as good as the best existing lower bounds.