Survey: Information flow on trees

Abstract

Consider a tree network T, where each edge acts as an independent copy of a given channel M, and information is propagated from the root. For which T and M does the configuration obtained at level n of T typically contain significant information on the root variable? This model appeared independently in biology, information theory, and statistical physics. Its analysis uses techniques from the theory of finite markov chains, statistics, statistical physics, information theory, cryptography and noisy computation. In this paper, we survey developments and challenges related to this problem.