Variable-Length Channel Resolvability for Discrete Memoryless Sources and Channels

Abstract

The problem of channel resolvability, where a given output probability distribution over a channel is approximated by encoding uniform random number as a channel input, is addressed. The channel resolvability has recently been generalized to the variable-length setting, where the variable-length uniform random number instead of the fixed-length one is encoded. Though the optimum resolvability rate can be reduced compared with the fixed-length resolvability, it is not yet clear how much resolvability rate can be saved even when the given source and channel are stationary and memoryless. Given a stationary memoryless source and a discrete memoryless channel, this paper establishes a single-letter formula for the variable-length resolvability under the variational distance as an approximation measure. When the channel is a full-rank discrete memoryless channel, the established formula reduces to a further simpler formula characterized by the mutual information between the source and the channel. The established formula also recovers a known formula for the variable-length source resolvability.