Early-detection scheme based on sequential tests for low-latency communications.

We propose an early-detection scheme to reduce communications latency based on sequential tests under finite blocklength regime for a fixed-rate transmission without any feedback channel. The proposed scheme processes observations sequentially to decide in favor of one of the candidate symbols. Such a process stops as soon as a decision rule is satisfied or waits for more samples under a given accuracy. We first provide the optimal achievable latency in additive white Gaussian noise channels for every channel code given a probability of block error. For example, for a rate $R=0.5$ and a blocklength of 500 symbols, we show that only $63\%$ of the symbol time is needed to reach an error rate equal to ${10}^{-5}$ . Then, we prove that if short messages can be transmitted in parallel Gaussian channels via a multi-carrier modulation, there exists an optimal low-latency strategy for every code. Next, we show how early detection can be effective with band-limited orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing signals while maintaining a given spectral efficiency by random coding or pre-coding random matrices. Finally, we show how the proposed early-detection scheme is effective in multi-hop systems.