Noisy feedback improves the BSC reliability function

Abstract

For the information transmission a binary symmetric channel is used. There is also another noisy binary symmetric channel (feedback channel), and the transmitter observes without delay all the outputs of the forward channel via that feedback channel. The overall transmission time is fixed. The transmission of a exponential number of messages (i.e. the transmission rate is positive) is considered. The achievable decoding error exponent for such a combination of channels is investigated. It is shown that if the crossover probability of the feedback channel is less than a certain positive value, then the achievable error exponent is better than the best known lower bound for the error exponent of the no-feedback channel.