Information and control: matching channels

The transmission problem for noisy channels is usually studied under the condition that the decoding error probability /spl lambda/ is small and is sometimes studied under the condition that /spl lambda/=0. Here we just require that /spl lambda/<1 and obtain a problem which is equivalent to a coding problem with small /spl lambda/ for the "deterministic matching channel." In this new model, a cooperative person knows the codeword to be sent and can choose (match) the state sequence of the channel. There are interesting connections to combinatorial matching theory and extensions to the theory of identification as well as to multi-way channels. In particular, there is a surprising connection to Pinsker's (1978) coding theorem for the deterministic broadcast channel.