Wiretap Channels: Implications of the More Capable Condition and Cyclic Shift Symmetry

Characterization of the rate-equivocation region of a general wiretap channel involves two auxiliary random variables:
U
, for rate splitting and
V
, for channel prefixing. In this paper, we explore specific classes of wiretap channels for which the evaluation of the rate-equivocation region is simpler. We show that if the wiretap channel is more capable,
V
=
X
is optimal and the boundary of the rate-equivocation region is achieved by varying rate splitting
U
alone. Conversely, we show under a mild condition that if the wiretap channel is not more capable, then
V
=
X
is strictly suboptimal. Next, we focus on the class of cyclic shift symmetric wiretap channels. We show that optimal rate splitting
U
that achieves the boundary of the rate-equivocation region is uniform with cardinality |
X
| and the prefix channel between optimal
U
and
V
is expressed as cyclic shifts of the solution of an auxiliary optimization problem over a single variable. We provide a special class of cyclic shift symmetric wiretap channels for which
U
=φ is optimal. We apply our results to the binary-input cyclic shift symmetric wiretap channels and thoroughly characterize the rate-equivocation regions of the BSC-BEC and BEC-BSC wiretap channels.