Channels with Markov Synchronization Errors: Information Stability and Capacity Bounds

Abstract

Particularly motivated by DNA storage channels, we consider channels with synchronization errors modeled as insertions and deletions, along with substitutions. We focus on the case where the synchronization error process has memory and investigate the information stability of these channels, hence the existence of their Shannon capacity. We assume that the synchronization errors are governed by a stationary and ergodic finite state Markov chain and prove that such a channel is information-stable, which implies the existence of a coding scheme that achieves the limit of mutual information. This result implies the existence of the Shannon capacity for a wide range of channels with synchronization errors, with different applications, including DNA storage. We also provide specific examples of deletion channels with Markov memory and numerically evaluate their capacity bounds, thereby allowing us to quantify the capacity difference between memoryless deletion channels and those with memory with the same deletion probability and reveal that having memory increases the channel capacity.