Comparison on Gentry's Fully homomorphic Encryption?

Question

This topic is very new to me. Is it possible to do comparison on the encrypted data(data is encrypted using Gentry's FHE)? If so, how can it be done?

Answer 1

Yes, it is possible. I remember at least of the article Low Depth Circuits for Efficient Homomorphic Sorting in which comparisons are discussed.

Encrypt you $\ell$-bit integers $a$ and $b$ bit by bit generating to $\ell$-dimensional vectors $(a_1, ..., a_\ell)$ and ($b_1, ..., b_\ell)$.

Than, to test homomorphically whether $a \le b$, do

$$C_{LT} = \sum_{k=1}^{\ell} (f(a_k, b_k) \cdot \prod_{k<t<\ell}g(a_t, b_t)) \mod 2$$

Where $f(a_k, b_k) = b_k \cdot (a_k + 1) \mod 2$ is "less than" for bits and $g(a_t, b_t) = b_t + a_t + 1 \mod 2$ is a "equal to" for bits.

Notice that the product from $k$ to $\ell$ can be performed in depth $\log(\ell - k)$ instead of in depth $\ell - k$.

You will probably find other results about homomorphically comparison by searching for articles that cite the one I put here.