Locally Repairable Codes with Functional Repair and Multiple Erasure Tolerance

Abstract: We consider the problem of designing [n; k] linear codes for distributed storage systems (DSS) that satisfy the (r, t)-Local Repair Property, where any t'(<=t) simultaneously failed nodes can be locally repaired, each with locality r. The parameters n, k, r, t are positive integers such that r<k<n and t <= n-k. We consider the functional repair model and the sequential approach for repairing multiple failed nodes. By functional repair, we mean that the packet stored in each newcomer is not necessarily an exact copy of the lost data but a symbol that keep the (r, t)-local repair property. By the sequential approach, we mean that the t' newcomers are ordered in a proper sequence such that each newcomer can be repaired from the live nodes and the newcomers that are ordered before it. Such codes, which we refer to as (n, k, r, t)-functional locally repairable codes (FLRC), are the most general class of LRCs and contain several subclasses of LRCs reported in the literature. In this paper, we aim to optimize the storage overhead (equivalently, the code rate) of FLRCs. We derive a lower bound on the code length n given t belongs to {2,3} and any possible k, r. For t=2, our bound generalizes the rate bound proved in [14]. For t=3, our bound improves the rate bound proved in [10]. We also give some onstructions of exact LRCs for t belongs to {2,3} whose length n achieves the bound of (n, k, r, t)-FLRC, which proves the tightness of our bounds and also implies that there is no gap between the optimal code length of functional LRCs and exact LRCs for certain sets of parameters. Moreover, our constructions are over the binary field, hence are of interest in practice.