ISlT 2000, Sorrento, Italy, June 25-30,2000

Efficient Coding Schemes for the Hard-Square Model'

Ron M. Roth Paul H. Siege1 Jack K. Wolf
Computer Science Department ECE Department CMRR
Technion Univ. of California, San Diego Univ. of California, San Diego
Haifa 32000, Israel. 9500 Gilman Drive 9500 Gilman Drive
.
e-mail: ronnyBcs technion.ac. il. La Jolla, CA 92093, USA. La Jolla, CA 92093, USA.
e-mail: psiegelBucsd.edu. e-mail: juolf (9ucsd.edu.

Abstract - The hard-square m o d e l consists o f all where, for two parameters qo E [0, 1) and q1 E (0,1],
binary arrays in w h i c h the 1's are isolated both hori-
qv ifu=y=O
zontally and vertically. Based on a c e r t a i n p r o b a b i l i t y O(0 I U , y, v) = 1 - O(1 I U, y, v) =
1 otherwise '
measure defined on those arrays, an efficient variable-
to-fixed-rate encoding scheme is obtained that maps The boundary measures, pih)
and p g ) , are set so that the non-
unconstrained b i n a r y w o r d s into arrays that satisfy boundary values have a stationary distribution. The limit
the hard-square model. For sufficiently l a r g e arrays,
the average rate of the encoder approaches a v a l u e
w h i c h is only 0.1% below the c a p a c i t y of the con-
straint. A second, fixed-rate encoder is o b t a i n e d
exists and can be written explicitly as a function of qo and q1.
w h o s e rate for l a r g e a r r a y s is w i t h i n 1.2% of the ca-
Maximizing this function yields H z 0.587277, which is the
pacity value.
average rate of our encoder. This rate is only 0.1% below the
I. INTRODUCTION capacity value of the hard-square model [l],[2], [4].
Recent developments in optical storage are attempting to 111. FIXED-RATE ENCODING SCHEME
increase the recording density by exploiting the fact that the With a slight compromise on the rate, we can also obtain
recording device is two-dimensional in nature. This, in turn, an efficient fixed-rate encoder into S(Am,n). Let Sf,, be the
motivates the study of coding schemes for two-dimensional set of all words in {0,1}' of Hamming weight r ,in which the
constraints that may be present in those devices. 1's are isolated, and for a prescribed positive integer t define
The hard-square model, defined next, is a notable example
of such a constraint. Consider (without real loss of generality)
the parallelograms

A m , , = { ( i , j ) ~ Z :Z Osi<m, O < i + j < n } The images of our encoder are elements z E S(A,,,) that sat-

and mappings z : Am,,, + ( 0 , l},where hereafter x,,j denotes

isfy the weight constraint cj
x i , j = t for each i. The coding
rate is [(log,K(n,t))/nJ,and the weight constraint allows to
the value of x at location (i,j) E Am,,,. We say that such a obtain efficient encoding through enumerative coding.
mapping z satisfies the hard-square model if zl,J= 1 implies It can be shown that for every fixed rational 6,
= 0 (when j < n-1) and zz+1,3= 0 (when i < m-1).
The set of all mappings over Am,,,that satisfy the hard-square limsup ( l / n ) . log, K ( n ,an) 2 sup F ( 6 , p ) ,
n-iw P
model will be denoted by S(Am,,,).
The main goal of this work is designing efficient lossless where p ranges over [0,min{6/(1-36), 1/2}] and
coding schemes of unconstrained binary words into, elements
F(6,P ) = 6.[l+h((l/s-3)p)l+(l-36).[(1-p).h(p/(l-p))-pl >
of S(Am,n).
with h(t) standing for -t.(log, t) - (1-t).log,(l-t). Maxi-
11. VARIABLE-TO-FIXED-RATE ENCODER mizing over 6, we thus obtain the coding rate
Based on the idea of two-dimensional bit-stuffing intro- maxF(6,p) M 0.581074 ,
duced in [3], we obtain a variable-to-fixed-rate encoder into (6-P)

S(Am+). Our encoder effectively realizes the following prob- which is within 1.2% of t h e capacity value of the hard-square
ability measure pm,n on S(Am,n):for every 2 E S(Am,n), model.

pm,n(z) = / & h ) ( ~ o , o , z o , l ., . , z O , n - l ) REFERENCES

'
P ~ ) ( X I , - ~~ ~, , - z r .. >. z m - l , - ( m - l ) )
m-1 n-1--1
i = l j=-i+1
'This work was supported in part by Grants Nos. 95-00522 and
98-00199 from the United-States-Israel Binational Science Founda-
tion (BSF), Jerusalem, Israel, by Grant No. NCR-9612802 of.the
National Science Foundation (NSF), and by the Center for Magnetic
Recording Research at the University of California, San Diego.
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