On the Minimum of a Positive Definite Quadratic Form over Non--Zero Lattice points. Theory and Applications

TL;DR

This paper extends sharp probability estimates for the minimum of positive definite quadratic forms over lattice points, with applications in information theory and signal processing, especially for the Integer-Forcing Receiver Architecture.

Contribution

It generalizes Kleinbock and Margulis's estimates to new probability measures from matrix decompositions, with applications to signal processing and communication channels.

Findings

Extended probability bounds to spectral and Cholesky measures

Established sharpness of bounds for a subclass of measures

Applied theoretical results to analyze the Effective Signal-to-Noise Ratio in communication systems

Abstract

Let $\Sigma_d^{++}$ be the set of positive definite matrices with determinant 1 in dimension $d\ge 2$. Identifying any two $SL_d(\mathbb{Z})$-congruent elements in $\Sigma_d^{++}$ gives rise to the space of reduced quadratic forms of determinant one, which in turn can be identified with the locally symmetric space $X_d:=SL_d(\mathbb{Z})\backslash SL_d(\mathbb{R})/SO_d(\mathbb{R})$. Equip the latter space with its natural probability measure coming from a Haar measure on $SL_d(\mathbb{R})$. In 1998, Kleinbock and Margulis established sharp estimates for the probability that an element of $X_d$ takes a value less than a given real number $\delta>0$ over the non--zero lattice points $\mathbb{Z}^d\backslash\{ 0 \}$. In this article, these estimates are extended to a large class of probability measures arising either from the spectral or the Cholesky decomposition of an element of $\Sigma_d^{++}$. The sharpness of the bounds thus obtained are also established (up to multiplicative constants) for a subclass of these measures. Although of an independent interest, this theory is partly developed here with a view towards application to Information Theory. More precisely, after providing a concise introduction to this topic fitted to our needs, we lay the theoretical foundations of the study of some manifolds frequently appearing in the theory of Signal Processing. This is then applied to the recently introduced Integer-Forcing Receiver Architecture channel whose importance stems from its expected high performance. Here, we give sharp estimates for the probabilistic distribution of the so-called \emph{Effective Signal--to--Noise Ratio}, which is an essential quantity in the evaluation of the performance of this model.