Principles of Digital Communication and Coding

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. The applications-oriented engineer or student can obtain an understanding of channel coding for physical channels by tackling only Chapters 2, 4, and about half of 6. Avoiding the intricacies of ensemble-average arguments, the reader can learn how to code for noisy channels without making the additional effort to understand the complete theory. At the opposite extreme, students with some background in digital communications can be guided through the channel-coding material in Chapters 3 through 6 in a one-semester or one-quarter course, and advanced students, who already have channel-coding background, can cover Part Three on source coding in a course of similar duration. Numerous problems are provided to furnish examples, to expand on the material or indicate related results, and occasionally to guide the reader through the steps of lengthy alternate proofs and derivations.