Expected Recovery Time in DNA-based Distributed Storage Systems

TL;DR

This paper studies the expected time to recover data in DNA-based distributed storage systems, accounting for sequencing constraints, and analyzes erasure-correcting codes using generalized Coupon Collector's Problem.

Contribution

It introduces a framework for analyzing recovery time in DNA storage systems considering sequencing constraints and extends Coupon Collector's Problem for this context.

Findings

Derived formulas for expected recovery time under various coding schemes.

Showed that sequencing randomness impacts recovery efficiency.

Provided insights into designing more robust DNA storage codes.

Abstract

We initiate the study of DNA-based distributed storage systems, where information is encoded across multiple DNA data storage containers to achieve robustness against container failures. In this setting, data are distributed over $M$ containers, and the objective is to guarantee that the contents of any failed container can be reliably reconstructed from the surviving ones. Unlike classical distributed storage systems, DNA data storage containers are fundamentally constrained by sequencing technology, since each read operation yields the content of a uniformly random sampled strand from the container. Within this framework, we consider several erasure-correcting codes and analyze the expected recovery time of the data stored in a failed container. Our results are obtained by analyzing generalized versions of the classical Coupon Collector's Problem, which may be of independent interest.