Markov Chain Monte Carlo Algorithms for Lattice Gaussian Sampling

Abstract: Sampling from a lattice Gaussian distribution is emerging as an important problem in various areas such as coding and cryptography. The default sampling algorithm --- Klein's algorithm yields a distribution close to the lattice Gaussian only if the standard deviation is sufficiently large. In this paper, we propose the Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method for lattice Gaussian sampling when this condition is not satisfied. In particular, we present a sampling algorithm based on Gibbs sampling, which converges to the target lattice Gaussian distribution for any value of the standard deviation. To improve the convergence rate, a more efficient algorithm referred to as Gibbs-Klein sampling is proposed, which samples block by block using Klein's algorithm. We show that Gibbs-Klein sampling yields a distribution close to the target lattice Gaussian, under a less stringent condition than that of the original Klein algorithm.