Professor Neri Merhav

The Irving Shepard Academic Chair

Last update: November 18, 2009.

Personal data

Local Address
Room 659, A. Meyer Building, X4737 (merhav@ee)
Snail-Mail Address
Professor Neri Merhav
Department of Electrical Engineering
Technion - Israel Institute of Technology
Technion City, Haifa 32000, Israel
Phone: +972-(4)-829-4737
Fax: +972-(4)-829-5757
Email: merhav AT ee DOT technion DOT ac DOT il

My main accomplishment is the following (joint work with Ilana Merhav):

Hilla, Roy, and Reut Merhav - triplets, 16 years young.

A Short Bio

I received the B.Sc., M.Sc., and D.Sc. degrees from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, in 1982, 1985, and 1988, respectively, all in electrical engineering. From 1988 to 1990 I was with AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ, USA. Since 1990 I have been with the Electrical Engineering Department of the Technion. During 1994-2000, I was also serving as a consultant to the Hewlett-Packard Laboratories - Israel (HPL-I). From 1996 until 1999 I served as an Associate Editor for Source Coding in the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. I also served as a co-chairman of the Program Committee of the 2001 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory. Currently, I am on the Editorial Board of Foundations and Trends in Communications and Information Theory. My complete CV can be found here.

Areas of Interest

My research interests include information theory, statistical communications, and statistical signal processing. I am especially interested in the areas of lossless/lossy source coding and prediction/filtering, relationships between information theory and statistics, detection, estimation, and Shannon Theory, including topics in joint source-channel coding, source/channel simulation, and coding with side information with applications to information hiding and watermarking systems. Another recent research interest of mine concerns the relationships between information theory and statistical physics.

Teaching

Undergraduate Studies

  • Random Signals
  • Introduction to Digital Communications
  • Introduction to Random-Signal Processing
  • Introduction to Digital Signal Processing
    •

    Graduate Studies

  • Information Theory
  • Coded Communication
  • Universal Lossless Data Compression
  • Rate Distortion Theory, Lossy Compression, and Quantization
  • Information Theory and Statistical Physics: Lecture notes currently available - Chapter 0.

    • A Few Articles (some are listed under more than one category)

    Lossless Source Coding

    1. N. Merhav, ``Universal coding with minimum probability of code word length overflow,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory vol. 37, no. 3, pp. 556-563, May 1991.
    2. N. Merhav and D. L. Neuhoff, ``Variable-to-fixed length codes provide better large deviations performance than fixed-to-variable length codes,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 38, no. 1, pp. 135-140, January 1992.
    3. N. Merhav, ``On the minimum description length principle for sources with piecewise constant parameters,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 39, no. 6, pp. 1962-1967, November 1993.
    4. M. J. Weinberger, N. Merhav, and M. Feder, ``Optimal sequential probability assignment for individual sequences,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory vol. 40, no. 2, pp. 384-396, March 1994.
    5. N. Merhav, ``Bounds on achievable convergence rates of parameter estimators via universal coding,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 40, no. 4, pp. 1210-1215, July 1994.
    6. N. Merhav and M. Feder, ``A strong version of the redundancy-capacity theorem of universal coding,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 41, no. 3, pp. 714-722, May 1995.
    7. M. Feder and N. Merhav, ``Universal coding for arbitrarily varying sources,'' Proc. 1995 IEEE Int. Symp. on Information Theory, (ISIT `95), p. 16, Whistler, British Columbia, Canada, September 1995.
    8. M. Feder and N. Merhav, ``Hierarchical universal coding,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 42, no. 5, pp. 1354-1364, September 1996.
    9. G. I. Shamir and N. Merhav, ``Low-complexity sequential lossless coding for piecewise stationary memoryless sources,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 45, no. 5, pp. 1498-1519, July 1999.
    10. N. Merhav, G. Seroussi, and M. J. Weinberger, ``Optimal prefix codes for sources with two-sided geometric distributions,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 46, no. 1, pp. 121-135, January 2000.
    11. N. Merhav, G. Seroussi, and M. J. Weinberger, ``Coding of sources with two-sided geometric distributions and unknown parameters,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 46, no. 1, pp. 229-236, January 2000.

    Lossy Source Coding and Rate-Distortion Theory

    1. N. Merhav and M. Feder, ``On the cost of universality of block codes for individual sequences,'' Proc. 1994 IEEE Int. Symp. on Information Theory (ISIT `94), p. 263, Trondheim, Norway, June 1994.
    2. N. Merhav, ``A comment on `A rate of convergence result for a universal $D-$semifaithful code','' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 41, no. 4, pp. 1200-1202, July 1995.
    3. N. Merhav, ``On list size exponents in rate-distortion coding,'' IEEE Trans. on Inform. Theory, vol. 43, no. 2, pp. 765-769, March 1997.
    4. N. Merhav and J. Ziv, ``On the amount of statistical side information required for lossy data compression,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory vol. 43, no. 4, pp. 1112-1121, July 1997.
    5. E. Arikan and N. Merhav, ``Guessing subject to distortion,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 44, no. 3, pp. 1041-1056, May 1998.
    6. N. Merhav, R. M. Roth, and E. Arikan, ``Hierarchical guessing with a fidelity criterion,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 45, no. 1, pp. 330-337, January 1999.
    7. T. Weissman and N. Merhav, ``Tradeoffs between the excess code-length exponent and the excess distortion exponent in lossy source coding,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 48, no. 2, pp. 396-415, February 2002.
    8. T. Weissman and N. Merhav, ``On limited-delay lossy coding and filtering of individual sequences,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 48, no. 3, pp. 721-733, March 2002.
    9. N. Merhav and I. Kontoyiannis, ``Source coding exponents for zero-delay coding with finite memory,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 49, no. 3, pp. 609-625, March 2003.
    10. T. Weissman and N. Merhav, ``On competitive predictability and its relation to rate-distortion theory and to channel capacity theory,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 49, no. 12, pp. 3185-3194, December 2003.
    11. Y. Steinberg and N. Merhav, ``On successive refinement for the Wyner-Ziv problem,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 50, no. 8, pp. 1636-1654, August 2004.
    12. I. Hen and N. Merhav, ``On the error exponent of trellis source coding,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 51, no. 11, pp. 3734-3741, November 2005.
    13. T. Weissman and N. Merhav, ``On causal source codes with side information,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 51, no. 11, pp. 4003-4013, Novemeber 2005.
    14. N. Merhav and J. Ziv, ``On the Wyner-Ziv problem for individual sequences,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 52, no. 3, pp. 867-873, March 2006.
    15. N. Merhav, ``On the statistical physics of directed polymers in a random medium and their relation to tree codes,'' submitted to IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, December 2008.
    16. A. Reani and N. Merhav, ``Efficient on-line schemes for encoding individual sequences with side information at the decoder,'' submitted to ISIT 2009, Seoul, Korea, June-July 2009. Full version: submitted to IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, August 2009.
    17. N. Merhav, ``Another look at the physics of large deviations with application to rate-distortion theory,'' submitted to IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, August 2009.
    18. Y. Kaspi and N. Merhav, ``Structure theorem for real-time variable-rate lossy source encoders and memory-limited decoders with side information, to be submitted to ISIT 2010, Austin, Texas, U.S.A., June 2010.

    Information-Theoretic Aspects of Digital Watermarking

    1. N. Merhav, ``On random coding error exponents of watermarking systems,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 46, no. 2, pp. 420-430, March 2000.
    2. N. Merhav, ``Universal detection of messages via finite-state channels,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 46, no. 6, pp. 2242-2246, September 2000.
    3. Y. Steinberg and N. Merhav, ``Identification in the presence of side information with application to watermarking,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 47, no. 4, pp. 1410-1422, May 2001.
    4. A. Somekh-Baruch and N. Merhav, ``On the error exponent and capacity games of private watermarking systems,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 49, no. 3, pp. 537-562, March 2003.
    5. A. Somekh-Baruch and N. Merhav, ``On the capacity game of public watermarking systems,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 50, no. 3, pp. 511-524, March 2004.
    6. A. Somekh-Baruch and N. Merhav, ``On the capacity game of private fingerprinting systems under collusion attacks,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 51, no. 3, pp. 884-899, March 2005.
    7. N. Merhav, ``An information-theoretic view of watermark embedding-detection and geometric attacks,'' presented at WaCha `05 , Barcelona, Spain, June 2005.
    8. A. Maor and N. Merhav, ``On joint information embedding and lossy compression,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 51, no. 8, pp. 2998-3008, August 2005.
    9. A. Maor and N. Merhav, ``On joint information embedding and lossy compression in the presence of a memoryless attack,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 51, no. 9, pp. 3166-3175, September 2005.
    10. N. Merhav and E. Ordentlich, ``On causal and semicausal codes for joint information embedding and source coding,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 52, no. 1, pp. 213-226, January 2006.
    11. N. Merhav, ``On joint coding for watermarking and encryption,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 52, no. 1, pp. 190-205, January 2006.
    12. A. Somekh-Baruch and N. Merhav, ``Achievable error exponents for the private fingerprinting game,'' in IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 53, no. 5, pp. 1827-1838, May 2007.
    13. N. Merhav and E. Sabbag, ``Optimal watermark embedding and detection strategies under limited detection resources,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 54, no. 1, pp. 255-274, January 2008.
    14. M. Barni, A. D'Angelo, and N. Merhav, ``Stochastic image warping for improved watermark de-synchronization,'' EURASIP Journal on Information Security, vol. 2008, Aritcle ID 345184, 14 pages, 2008. doi:10.1155/2008/354184.
    15. P. Comesana, M. Barni, and N. Merhav, ``Asymptotically optimum embedding strategy for one-bit watermarking under Gaussian attacks,'' Proc. 2008 SPIE Conference , 2008. Full version, submitted to IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, is here.

    Prediction and Sequential Decision Making

    1. M. Feder, N. Merhav, and M. Gutman, ``Universal prediction of individual sequences,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 38, no. 4, pp. 1258-1270, July 1992 (received the 1993 paper award of the Information Theory Society).
    2. N. Merhav, M. Feder, and M. Gutman, ``Some properties of sequential predictors for binary Markov sources,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 39, no. 3, pp. 887-892, May 1993.
    3. N. Merhav and M. Feder, ``Universal schemes for sequential decision from individual data sequences,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory vol. 39, no. 4, pp. 1280-1291, July 1993.
    4. R. Meir and N. Merhav, ``On the stochastic complexity of learning realizable and unrealizable rules,'' Machine Learning vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 241-261, 1995.
    5. A. Baruch and N. Merhav, ``Universal filtering and prediction of individual sequences corrupted by noise using the Lempel-Ziv algorithm,'' Proc. 2000 IEEE Int. Symp. on Information Theory (ISIT 2000), p. 99, Sorrento, Italy, June 2000.
    6. T. Weissman and N. Merhav, ``Universal prediction of individual binary sequences in the presence of arbitrarily varying, memoryless, additive noise,'' Proc. 2000 IEEE Int. Symp. on Information Theory (ISIT 2000), p. 97, Sorrento, Italy, June 2000.
    7. T. Weissman, N. Merhav, and A. Somekh-Baruch, ``Twofold universal prediction schemes for achieving the finite state predictability of a noisy individual binary sequence,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol 47, no. 5, pp. 1849-1866, July 2001.
    8. T. Weissman and N. Merhav, ``Universal prediction of binary individual sequences in the presence of noise,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 47, no. 6, pp. 2151-2173, September 2001.
    9. N. Merhav, E. Ordentlich, G. Seroussi, and M. J. Weinberger, ``On sequential strategies for loss functions with memory,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 48, no. 7, pp. 1947-1958, July 2002.
    10. N. Merhav and T. Weissman, ``Scanning and prediction in multi-dimensional data arrays,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 49, no. 1, pp. 65-82, January 2003.
    11. T. Weissman and N. Merhav, ``On competitive predictability and its relation to rate-distortion theory and to channel capacity theory,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 49, no. 12, pp. 3185-3194, December 2003.
    12. T. Weissman and N. Merhav, ``Universal prediction of random binary sequences in a noisy environment,'' Annals of Applied Probability, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 54-89. February 2004.
    13. E. Ordentlich, T. Weissman, M. J. Weinberger, A. Somekh-Baruch, and N. Merhav, ``Discrete universal filtering through incremental parsing,'' Proc. DCC 2004, Snowbird, Utah, March 2004.
    14. E. Sabbag and N. Merhav, ``Large deviations performance of predictors for Markov sources,'' Proc. ISIT 2004 , p. 11, Chicago, IL, June-July 2004.
    15. J. Ziv and N. Merhav, ``On context-tree prediction of individual sequences,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 53, no. 5, pp. 1860-1866, May 2007.
    16. T. Weissman, E. Ordentlich, M. J. Weinberger, A. Somekh-Baruch, and N. Merhav,'' ``Universal filtering via prediction,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 53, no. 4, pp. 1253-1264, April 2007.
    17. A. Cohen, N. Merhav, and T. Weissman, ``Scanning and sequential decision making for multi-dimensional data: part I - the noiseless case,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 53, no. 9, pp. 3001-3020, September 2007.
    18. A. Cohen, T. Weissman, and N. Merhav, ``Scanning and sequential decision making for multi-dimensional data: part II - the noisy case,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 54, no. 12, pp. 5609-5631, December 2008.

    Universal Hypothesis Testing and Universal Decoding

    1. N. Merhav, M. Gutman, and J. Ziv, ``On the estimation of the order of a Markov chain and universal data compression,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory vol. 35, no. 5, pp. 1014-1019, September 1989.
    2. N. Merhav, ``On the estimation of the model order in exponential families,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. IT-35, no. 5, pp. 1109-1114, September 1989.
    3. J. Ziv and N. Merhav, ``Estimating the number of states of a finite-state source,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 38, no. 1, pp. 61-65, January 1992.
    4. O. Zeitouni, J. Ziv, and N. Merhav, ``When is the generalized likelihood ratio test optimal?'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 38, no. 5, pp. 1597-1602, September 1992.
    5. N. Merhav, ``Universal decoding for memoryless Gaussian channels with a deterministic interference,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 39, no. 4, pp. 1261-1269, July 1993
    6. J. Ziv and N. Merhav, ``A measure of relative entropy between individual sequences with application to universal classification,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 39, no. 4, pp. 1270-1279, July 1993.
    7. N. Merhav, ``Universal detection of messages via finite-state channels,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 46, no. 6, pp. 2242-2246, September 2000.
    8. M. Feder and N. Merhav, ``Universal composite hypothesis testing: A competitive minimax approach,'' (invited paper) IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, special issue in memory of Aaron D. Wyner, vol. 48, no. 6, pp. 1504-1517, June 2002.
    9. E. Levitan and N. Merhav, ``A competitive Neyman-Pearson approach to universal hypothesis testing with applications,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 48, no. 8, pp. 2215-2229, August 2002.
    10. N. Merhav, ``An information-theoretic view of watermark embedding-detection and geometric attacks,'' presented at WaCha `05 , Barcelona, Spain, June 2005.
    11. N. Merhav and E. Sabbag, ``Optimal watermark embedding and detection strategies under limited detection resources,'' submitted to IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, December 2005.
    12. N. Merhav and M. Feder, ``Minimax universal decoding with an erasure option,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 53, no. 5, pp. 1664-1675, May 2007.
    13. Y. Akirav and N. Merhav, ``Competitive minimax universal decoding for several ensembles of random codes,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 55, no. 4, pp. 1450-1459, April 2009.

    Shannon Theory (General)

    1. M. Feder and N. Merhav, ``Relations between entropy and error probability,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 40, no. 1, pp. 259-266, January 1994.
    2. N. Merhav, G. Kaplan, A. Lapidoth, and S. Shamai (Shitz), ``On information rates for mismatched decoders,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 40, no. 6, pp. 1953-1967, November 1994.
    3. N. Merhav, ``How many information bits does a decoder need about the channel statistics?'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 43, no. 5, pp. 1707-1714, September 1997.
    4. E. Arikan and N. Merhav, ``Joint source-channel coding and guessing with application to sequential decoding,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 44, no. 5, pp. 1756-1769, September 1998.
    5. N. Merhav and S. Shamai (Shitz), ``On joint source-channel coding for the Wyner-Ziv source and the Gel'fand-Pinsker channel,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 49, no. 11, pp. 2844-2855, November 2003.
    6. N. Merhav, ``On joint coding for watermarking and encryption,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 52, no. 1, pp. 190-205, January 2006.
    7. Y. Steinberg and N. Merhav, ``On hierarchical joint source-channel coding with degraded side information,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 52, no. 3, pp. 886-903, March 2006.
    8. N. Merhav, ``On the Shannon cipher system with a capacity-limited key-distribution channel,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 52, no. 3, pp. 1269-1273, March 2006.
    9. A. Maor and N. Merhav, ``Two-way successively refined joint source-channel coding with a fidelity criterion,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 52, no. 4, pp. 1483-1494, April 2006.
    10. T. Weissman and N. Merhav, ``Coding for the feedback Gel'fand-Pinsker channel and the feedforward Wyner-Ziv source,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 52, no. 9, pp. 4207-4211, September 2006.
    11. A. Maor and N. Merhav, ``On successive refinement with causal side information at the decoders,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 54, no. 1, pp. 332-343, January 2008.
    12. N. Merhav, ``The random energy model in a magnetic field and joint source-channel coding,'' Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications , vol. 387, issue 22, pp. 5662-5674, September 15, 2008.
    13. N. Merhav, ``Joint source-channel coding via statistical mechanics: thermal equilibrium between the source and the channel,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 55, no. 12, pp. 5382-5393, December 2009.
    14. A. Maor and N. Merhav, ``On successive refinement for the Kaspi/Heegard-Berger problem,'' submitted to IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory}, December 2008.
    15. N. Merhav, ``Physics of the Shannon limits,'' submitted to IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, March, 2009. Short version - to appear in Proc. 2009 IEEE Workshop on Information Theory (ITW 2009), Taormina, Sicily, Italy, October 2009.

    Shannon-Theoretic Secrecy

    1. N. Merhav and E. Arikan, ``The Shannon cipher system with a guessing wiretapper,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 45, no. 6, pp. 1860-1866, September 1999.
    2. N. Merhav, ``A large-deviations notion of perfect secrecy,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 49, no. 2, pp. 506-508, February 2003.
    3. N. Merhav, ``On joint coding for watermarking and encryption,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 52, no. 1, pp. 190-205, January 2006.
    4. N. Merhav, ``On the Shannon cipher system with a capacity-limited key-distribution channel,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 52, no. 3, pp. 1269-1273, March 2006.
    5. N. Merhav and S. Shamai (Shitz), ``Information rates subjected to state masking,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 53, no. 6, pp. 2254-2261, June 2007.
    6. N. Merhav, ``Shannon's secrecy system with informed receivers an its application to systematic coding for wiretapped channels,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, special issue on Information-Theoretic Security, vol. 54, no. 6, pp. 2723-2734, June 2008.

    Information-Theoretic Aspects of Universal Simulation of Random Processes

    1. N. Merhav and M. J. Weinberger, ``On universal simulation of information sources using training data,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 50, no. 1, pp. 5-20, January 2004.
    2. N. Merhav, ``Achievable key rates for universal simulation of random data with respect to a set of statistical tests,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 50, no. 1, pp. 21-30, January 2004.
    3. N. Merhav and M. J. Weinberger, ``Addendum to "on universal simulation of information sources using training data",'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 51, no. 9, pp. 3181-3183, September 2005.
    4. N. Merhav, G. Seroussi, and M. J. Weinberger, ``Universal delay-limited simulation,'' Proc. ISIT 2005, pp. 765-769, Adelaide, Australia, September 2005. The full journal version (in IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 54, no. 12, pp. 5525-5533, December 2008) is here.
    5. N. Merhav and M. J. Weinberger, ``Universal simulation with fidelity criteria,'' Proc. ISIT 2006, pp. 2521-2525. The full version ( in IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 55, no. 1, pp. 292-302, January 2009) is here.
    6. A. Martin, N. Merhav, G. Seroussi, and M. J. Weinberger, ``Twice-universal simulation of Markov sources and individual sequences,'' Proc. ISIT 2007, pp. 2876-2880, Nice, France, June 2007. Full version, submitted to IEEE Trans. on Inform. Theory in Sept. 2009, can be found here.

    Estimation Theory and Other Topics in Statistical Signal Processing

    1. N. Merhav and J. Ziv, ``On universally efficient estimation of the first-order autoregressive parameter, and universal data compression,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory vol. 36, no. 6, pp. 1245-1254, November 1990.
    2. Y. Ephraim and N. Merhav, ``Lower and upper bounds on the minimum mean square error in composite source signal estimation,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 38, no. 6, pp. 1709-1724, November 1992.
    3. N. Merhav and C.-H. Lee, ``A minimax classification approach with application to robust speech recognition,'' IEEE Trans. Speech and Audio Processing, vol. SAP-1, no. 1, pp. 90-100, January 1993.
    4. N. Merhav and C.-H. Lee, ``On the asymptotic statistical behavior of empirical cepstral coefficients,'' IEEE Trans. Signal Processing, vol. SP-41, no. 5, pp. 1990-1993, May 1993.
    5. N. Merhav, ``Bounds on achievable convergence rates of parameter estimators via universal coding,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 40, no. 4, pp. 1210-1215, July 1994.
    6. Y. Ephraim, N. Merhav, and H. L. Van Trees, ``Min-Norm interpretations and consistency of MUSIC, MODE and ML,'' IEEE Trans. Signal Processing, vol. SP-43, no. 12, pp. 2937-2942, December 1995.
    7. D. Hirshberg and N. Merhav, ``Robust methods for model order estimation,'' IEEE Trans. on Signal Processing, vol. SP-44, no. 3, pp. 620-628, March 1996.
    8. J. Stein, J. Ziv, and N. Merhav, ``Universal delay estimation for discrete channels,'' IEEE Trans. on Inform. Theory, vol. 42, Part II, no. 6, pp. 2085-2093, November 1996.
    9. Y. C. Eldar and N. Merhav, ``A competitive minimax approach to robust estimation in linear models,'' IEEE Trans. Signal Processing, vol. 52, no. 7, pp. 1931-1946, July 2004.
    10. I. Hen and N. Merhav, ``On the threshold effect in the estimation of chaotic sequences,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 50, no. 11, pp. 2894-2904, November 2004.
    11. Y. C. Eldar and N. Merhav, ``Robust linear estimation under a minimax MSE-ratio criterion,'' IEEE Trans. Signal Processing, vol. 53, no. 4, pp. 1335-1347, April 2005.
    12. G. Bukai and N. Merhav, ``Channel estimation using feedback,'' to appear in Proc. ISIT 2008, Toronto, Canada, July 2008.
    13. N. Merhav, D. Guo, and S. Shamai (Shitz), ``Statistical physics of signal estimation in Gaussian noise: theory and examples of phase transitions,'' to appear in IEEE Trans. on Inform. Theory, March 2010.
    14. N. Merhav, ``Optimum estimation via gradients of partition functions and information measures: a statistical-mechanical perspective,'' submitted to IEEE Trans. on Inform. Theory, November 2009.

    Exponential Error Bounds and Reliability Functions of Source Coding and Channel Coding

    1. N. Merhav, ``On random coding error exponents of watermarking systems,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 46, no. 2, pp. 420-430, March 2000.
    2. T. Weissman and N. Merhav, ``Tradeoffs between the excess code-length exponent and the excess distortion exponent in lossy source coding,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 48, no. 2, pp. 396-415, February 2002.
    3. N. Merhav and I. Kontoyiannis, ``Source coding exponents for zero-delay coding with finite memory,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 49, no. 3, pp. 609-625, March 2003.
    4. I. Hen and N. Merhav, ``On the error exponent of trellis source coding,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 51, no. 11, pp. 3734-3741, November 2005.
    5. A. Somekh-Baruch and N. Merhav, ``On the error exponent and capacity games of private watermarking systems,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 49, no. 3, pp. 537-562, March 2003.
    6. A. Cohen and N. Merhav, ``Lower bounds on the error probability of block codes based on improvements on de Caen's inequality,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 50, no. 2, pp. 290-310, February 2004.
    7. A. Somekh-Baruch and N. Merhav, ``Achievable error exponents for the private fingerprinting game,'' in IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 53, no. 5, pp. 1827-1838, May 2007.
    8. M. Feder and N. Merhav, ``Universal composite hypothesis testing: A competitive minimax approach,'' (invited paper) IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, special issue in memory of Aaron D. Wyner, vol. 48, no. 6, pp. 1504-1517, June 2002.
    9. N. Merhav and M. Feder, ``Minimax universal decoding with an erasure option,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 53, no. 5, pp. 1664-1675, May 2007.
    10. Y. Akirav and N. Merhav, ``Competitive minimax universal decoding for several ensembles of random codes,'' submitted to IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, July 2007.
    11. A. Somekh-Baruch and N. Merhav, ``On the random coding error exponents of the single-user and the multiple-access Gel'fand-Pinsker channels,'' Proc. ISIT 2004, p. 448, Chicago, IL, June-July, 2004.
    12. R. Etkin, N. Merhav, and E. Ordentlich, ``Error exponents of optimum decoding for the interference channel,'' in Proc. ISIT 2008, Toronto, Canada, July 2008. The full journal paper is here.
    13. Y. Kaspi and N. Merhav, ``Error exponents for degraded broadcast channels with degraded message sets,'' in Proc. ISIT 2008, Toronto, Canada, July 2008.
    14. N. Merhav, ``Error exponents of erasure/list decoding revisited via moments of distance enumerators,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, , October 2008.
    15. Y. Kaspi and N. Merhav, ``Error exponents of optimum decoding for the degraded broadcast channel using moments of type-class enumerators,'' in Proc. ISIT 2009, Seoul, Korea, June-July 2009.
    16. E. Sabbag and N. Merhav, ``Achievable error exponents for channels with side information - erasure and list decoding,'' submitted to IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, March 2009.
    17. A. Somekh Baruch and N. Merhav, ``Exact random coding exponents for erasure decoding,'' submitted to ISIT 2010, Austin, Texas, U.S.A., June 2010.

    Information Theory and Statistical Physics

    1. N. Merhav, ``An identity of Chernoff bounds with an interpretation in statistical physics and applications in information theory,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 54, no. 8, pp. 3710-3721, August 2008.
    2. N. Merhav, ``Relations between random coding exponents and the statistical physics of random codes,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, , vol. 55, no. 1, pp. 83-92, January 2009.
    3. N. Merhav, ``The generalized random energy model of spin glasses and its application to the statistical physics of code ensembles with hierarchical structures,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory , vol. 55, no. 3, pp. 1250-1268, March 2009.
    4. N. Merhav, ``The random energy model in a magnetic field and joint source-channel coding,'' Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications , vol. 387, issue 22, pp. 5662-5674, September 15, 2008.
    5. N. Merhav, ``Joint source-channel coding via statistical mechanics: thermal equilibrium between the source and the channel,'' IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 55, no. 12, pp. 5382-5393, December 2009.
    6. N. Merhav, ``On the statistical physics of directed polymers in a random medium and their relation to tree codes,'' to appear in IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, March 2010.
    7. N. Merhav, D. Guo, and S. Shamai (Shitz), ``Statistical physics of signal estimation in Gaussian noise: theory and examples of phase transitions,'' to appear in IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, March 2010.
    8. N. Merhav, ``Physics of the Shannon limits,'' submitted to IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, March, 2009. Short version - Proc. 2009 IEEE Workshop on Information Theory (ITW 2009), Taormina, Sicily, Italy, October 11-16, 2009.
    9. N. Merhav, ``Another look at the physics of large deviations with application to rate-distortion theory,'' submitted to IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, August 2009.
    10. N. Merhav, ``Optimum estimation via gradients of partition functions and information measures: a statistical-mechanical perspective,'' submitted to IEEE Trans. on Inform. Theory, November 2009.
    11. N. Merhav and Y. Kafri, ``Bose-Einstein condensation in the large deviations regime with applications to information system models,'' Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment, P02011, February 2010.

    Data Processing in the Compressed Domain

    1. N. Merhav and V. Bhaskaran, ``Fast inverse motion compensation algorithms for MPEG-2 and for partial DCT information,'' J. Visual Communication and Image Representation, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 395-410, December 1996.
    2. N. Merhav and V. Bhaskaran, ``Fast algorithms for DCT-domain down-sampling and inverse motion compensation,'' IEEE Trans. on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 468-476, June 1997.
    3. N. Merhav and R. Kresch, ``Approximate convolution using DCT coefficient multipliers,'' IEEE Trans. on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, vol. CSVT-8, no. 4, pp. 378-385, August 1998.
    4. R. Kresch and N. Merhav, ``Fast DCT-domain filtering using the DCT and the DST,'' IEEE Trans. on Image Processing, vol. 8, no. 6, pp. 821-833, June 1999.
    5. N. Merhav, ``Multiplication-free approximate algorithms for compressed domain linear operations on images,'' IEEE Trans. Image Processing, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 247-254, February 1999.

    Tutorials

    1. N. Merhav and M. Feder, ``Universal prediction,'' (invited paper) IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 44, no. 6, pp. 2124-2147, October 1998. (Commemorative issue for fifty years of Information Theory.) Also, in Information Theory: 50 Years of Discovery, pp. 80-103, Eds. S. Verdu and S. McLaughlin, IEEE Press, 1999.
    2. Y. Ephraim and N. Merhav, ``Hidden Markov processes,'' (invited paper) IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, special issue in memory of Aaron D. Wyner, vol. 48, no. 6, pp. 1518-1569, June 2002. Downloadable from Yariv Ephraim's web-page.
    3. G. Keshet, Y. Steinberg, and N. Merhav, ``Channel coding in the presence of side information,'' Foundations and Trends in Communications and Information Theory, vol. 4, issue 6, 2007.

    Talks

    1. N. Merhav, ``A statistical-mechanical view of code ensembles and random coding exponents,'' the Communication and Information Theory Seminar, EE Department, Technion, March 27, 2008.
    2. N. Merhav, ``Statistical physics of the mutual information,'' Physics Colloquium, Physics Department, Technion, February 19, 2009.
    3. N. Merhav, ``Physics of the Shannon limits,'' ITW 2009, Taormina, Sicily, October 11-16, 2009.