Coding for Secure Write-Efficient Memories

• Published in: IEEE transactions on information theory Vol. 63; no. 2; pp. 1130 - 1145
• Main Authors: Qing Li, Jiang, Anxiao Andrew
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01-02-2017; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Channel estimation; Coding; Coding theory; Communication channels; Computer memory; Decoding; Deletion; Encoding; endurance; Fatigue limit; Information theory; Noise measurement; Non-volatile memories; Nonvolatile memory; Phase change materials; polar codes; Resistance; rewriting-rate-equivocation region; secrecy rewriting capacity; security; wire-tap channel; write-efficient memories
• ISSN: 0018-9448; 1557-9654
• DOI: 10.1109/TIT.2016.2634553

Non-volatile memories suffer from two challenges due to their physical and system-level constraints. One challenge is limited memory lifetime, also called the endurance problem. The other is the difficulty in deleting data securely, called the insecure deletion problem. This paper proposes a coding scheme that addresses both challenges jointly. It studies the secure write-efficient memory (WEM) by analyzing its rewriting-rate equivocation region and secrecy rewriting capacity. It also presents an optimal code construction for a large family of secure WEM channels.