Essays On Coding Theory

Brief informal introductions to coding techniques developed for the storage, retrieval, and transmission of large amounts of data.

This Festschrift volume contains the proceedings of the conference Mathematical Methods in Computer Science, MMICS 2008, held December 2008, in Karlsruhe, Germany, in memory of Thomas Beth. The themes of the conference reflect his many interests.

This book explores the latest developments, methods, approaches, and applications of coding theory in a wide variety of fields and endeavors. It consists of seven chapters that address such topics as applications of coding theory in networking and cryptography, wireless sensor nodes in wireless body area networks, the construction of linear codes, and more.

Most coding theory experts date the origin of the subject with the 1948 publication of A Mathematical Theory of Communication by Claude Shannon. Since then, coding theory has grown into a discipline with many practical applications (antennas, networks, memories), requiring various mathematical techniques, from commutative algebra, to semi-definite programming, to algebraic geometry. Most topics covered in the Concise Encyclopedia of Coding Theory are presented in short sections at an introductory level and progress from basic to advanced level, with definitions, examples, and many references. The book is divided into three parts: Part I fundamentals: cyclic codes, skew cyclic codes, quasi-cyclic codes, self-dual codes, codes and designs, codes over rings, convolutional codes, performance bounds Part II families: AG codes, group algebra codes, few-weight codes, Boolean function codes, codes over graphs Part III applications: alternative metrics, algorithmic techniques, interpolation decoding, pseudo-random sequences, lattices, quantum coding, space-time codes, network coding, distributed storage, secret-sharing, and code-based-cryptography. Features Suitable for students and researchers in a wide range of mathematical disciplines Contains many examples and references Most topics take the reader to the frontiers of research

The areas of communications, computer networks, and signal processing have undergone rapid development over the past several years. The advent of VLSI circuitry and increasingly sophisticated computer hardware and software techniques have made possible the construction of systems and signal proces sors for· communications applications not contemplated only a short time ago. The increasing complexity of communication systems, both by themselves and in land-based or satellite networks, has created a greater need for finding use ful mathematical techniques for their analysis. The rapidly evolving technolo gies involved continue to find exciting new areas for application, and it remains a challenge for researchers to keep abreast of developments. In this volume researchers from a broad cross section of the areas of communications, signal processing, and computer networks have been invited to contribute articles to assist readers in learning about the current state of research and future research directions in their area. The authors were not given tight guidelines for their contributions and thus the character and emphasis of each chapter differs. Although the scope of the areas considered is necessarily limited in a volume of this size, the coverage here is quite broad and it is hoped that the reader will find the contents of this volume to be interesting, useful, and informative.