paper

Bayesian M-ary Hypothesis Testing: The Meta-Converse and Verdú-Han Bounds are Tight

arXiv:1411.3292

Abstract

Two alternative exact characterizations of the minimum error probability of Bayesian M-ary hypothesis testing are derived. The first expression corresponds to the error probability of an induced binary hypothesis test and implies the tightness of the meta-converse bound by Polyanskiy, Poor and Verdú; the second expression is function of an information-spectrum measure and implies the tightness of a generalized Verdú-Han lower bound. The formulas characterize the minimum error probability of several problems in information theory and help to identify the steps where existing converse bounds are loose.

Accepted for publication in the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory