Private Information Retrieval: Combinatorics of the Star-Product Scheme

Abstract

In coded private information retrieval (PIR), a user wants to download a file from a distributed storage system without revealing the identity of the file. We consider the setting where certain subsets of servers collude to deduce the identity of the requested file. These subsets form an abstract simplicial complex called the collusion pattern. In this thesis, we study the combinatorics of the general star-product scheme for PIR under the assumption that the distributed storage system is encoded using a repetition code.