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Abstract-As communication systems scale up in speed and bandwidth, the cost and power consumption of high-precision (e.g., 8-12 bits) analog-to-digital conversion (ADC) becomes the limiting factor in modern transceiver architectures based on digital signal processing. In this work, we explore the impact of lowering the precision of the ADC on the performance of the communication link. Specifically, we evaluate the communication limits imposed by low-precision ADC (e.g., 1-3 bits) for transmission over the real discrete-time Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) channel, under an average power constraint on the input. For an ADC with K quantization bins (i.e., a precision of log 2 K bits), we show that the input distribution need not have any more than K+1 mass points to achieve the channel capacity. For 2-bin (1-bit) symmetric quantization, this result is tightened to show that binary antipodal signaling is optimum for any signal-tonoise ratio (SNR). For multi-bit quantization, a dual formulation of the channel capacity problem is used to obtain tight upper bounds on the capacity. The cutting-plane algorithm is employed to compute the capacity numerically, and the results obtained are used to make the following encouraging observations : (a) up to a moderately high SNR of 20 dB, 2-3 bit quantization results in only 10-20% reduction of spectral efficiency compared to unquantized observations, (b) standard equiprobable pulse amplitude modulated input with quantizer thresholds set to implement maximum likelihood hard decisions is asymptotically optimum at high SNR, and works well at low to moderate SNRs as well.

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We consider the problem of estimating the impulse response of a dispersive channel when the channel output is sampled using a low-precision analog-to-digital converter (ADC). While traditional channel estimation techniques require about 6 bits of ADC precision to approach full-precision performance, we are motivated by applications to multiGigabit communication, where we may be forced to use much lower precision (e.g., 1-3 bits) due to considerations of cost, power, and technological feasibility. We show that, even with such low ADC precision, it is possible to attain near full-precision performance using closed-loop estimation, where the ADC input is dithered and scaled. The dither signal is obtained using linear feedback based on the Minimum Mean Squared Error (MMSE) criterion. The dither feedback coefficients and the scaling gains are computed offline using Monte Carlo simulations based on a statistical model for the channel taps, and are found to work well over wide range of channel variations.

In this paper, we apply the theory of hypothesis testing to the steganalysis, or detection of hidden data, in the least significant bit (LSB) of a host image. The hiding rate (if data is hidden) and host probability mass function (PMF) are unknown. Our main results are as follows. a) Two types of tests are derived: a universal (over choices of host PMF) method that has certain asymptotic optimality properties and methods that are based on knowledge or estimation of the host PMF and, hence, an appropriate likelihood ratio (LR). b) For a known host PMF, it is shown that the composite hypothesis testing problem corresponding to an unknown hiding rate reduces to a worst-case simple hypothesis testing problem. c) Using the results for a known host PMF, practical tests based on the estimation of the host PMF are obtained. These are shown to be superior to the state of the art in terms of receiver operating characteristics as well as self-calibration across different host images. Estimators for the hiding rate are also developed.Index Terms-Approximate log-liklihood ratio test, hypothesis testing, LSB hiding, steganalysis, universal asymptotic optimality.