Reconciling similar sets of data

Abstract

In this work, we consider the problem of synchronizing two sets of data where the size of the symmetric difference between the sets is small and, in addition, the elements in the symmetric difference are related. In this introductory work, the elements within the symmetric difference are related through the Hamming distance metric. Upper and lower bounds are derived on the minimum amount of information exchange. Furthermore, explicit encoding and decoding algorithms are provided for special cases.

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