SC700 - Modern Information
Protocols
The following is a tentative syllabus for SC700. The actual material covered will be mitigated by the class background and progress.
I. Introduction
a) Simple data structures
b) Graphs
c) Big-oh analysis
d) Essential number theory
e) Rings
f) Finite fields
II. Compression
a) Information theory
b) Lossless
Huffman coding
Lempel-Ziv and variants
c) Lossy
JPEG, MPEG
wavelet/fractal compression
III.Error-correction
a) Background
generator/parity-check matrix
b) Encoding
Hamming codes
BCH, Reed-Solomon codes, algebraic-geometry codes
Low Density Parity-Check codes
design and constraints
c) Decoding
syndrome decoding
trellis decoding
iterative decoding, belief propagation
code design
IV. Cryptography
a) Classical
cipher systems
cryptanalysis
Kasiski test, Incidence of Coincidence
b) Private-key systems
DES, etc.
c) Psuedo-random numbers
exponential, LFSR
d) Public-key systems
Merkle-Hellman, Diffie-Helman
RSA, elliptic-curve
McEliece
e) Attacks and weaknesses
social engineering
number theoretic
Pollard rho, Quadratic sieve
Hastad, Franklin-Reiter, Coppersmith
implementational
timing
random faults
V. Information dispersion
a) resource discovery
b) data reconciliation
c) CPIsync
deterministic
probabilistic
multi-round
d) Relations
to ECC, to graph coloring
e) network synchronization
f) gossip protocols