Private Information Retrieval Without Storage Overhead: Coding Instead of Replication
Private information retrieval (PIR) protocols allow a user to retrieve a data item from a database without revealing any information about the identity of the item being retrieved. Specifically, in information-theoretic $k$ -server PIR, the database is replicated among $k$ non-communicating servers, and each server learns nothing about the item retrieved by the user. The effectiveness of PIR protocols is usually measured in terms of their communication complexity, which is the total number of bits exchanged between the user and the servers.