Outer bounds on the storage-repair bandwidth trade-off of exact-repair regenerating codes (Q517728)

Summary: In this paper, three outer bounds on the normalised storage-repair bandwidth trade-off of regenerating codes having parameter set \(\{(n, k, d), (\alpha, \beta)\}\) under the exact-repair (ER) setting are presented. The first outer bound, termed as the repair-matrix bound, is applicable for every parameter set \((n, k, d)\), and in conjunction with a code construction known as improved layered codes, it characterises the normalised ER trade-off for the case (\(n\), \(k = 3\), \(d=n-1\)). The bound shows that a non-vanishing gap exists between the ER and functional-repair (FR) trade-offs for every \((n, k, d)\). The second bound, termed as the improved Mohajer-Tandon bound, is an improvement upon an existing bound due to Mohajer et al. and performs better in a region away from the minimum-storage-regenerating (MSR) point. However, in the vicinity of the MSR point, the repair-matrix bound outperforms the improved Mohajer-Tandon bound. The third bound is applicable to linear codes for the case \(k = d\). In conjunction with the class of layered codes, the third outer bound characterises the normalised ER trade-off in the case of linear codes when \(k = d = n-1\).