The Theory Of Information And Coding

Student edition of the classic text in information and coding theory

This text is an elementary introduction to information and coding theory. The first part focuses on information theory, covering uniquely decodable and instantaneous codes, Huffman coding, entropy, information channels, and Shannon’s Fundamental Theorem. In the second part, linear algebra is used to construct examples of such codes, such as the Hamming, Hadamard, Golay and Reed-Muller codes. Contains proofs, worked examples, and exercises.

Focusing on both theory and practical applications, this volume combines in a natural way the two major aspects of information representation--representation for storage (coding theory) and representation for transmission (information theory).

Various measures of information are discussed in first chapter. Information rate, entropy and mark off models are presented. Second and third chapter deals with source coding. Shannon's encoding algorithm, discrete communication channels, mutual information, Shannon's first theorem are also presented. Huffman coding and Shannon-Fano coding is also discussed. Continuous channels are discussed in fourth chapter. Channel coding theorem and channel capacity theorems are also presented. Block codes are discussed in chapter fifth, sixth and seventh. Linear block codes, Hamming codes, syndrome decoding is presented in detail. Structure and properties of cyclic codes, encoding and syndrome decoding for cyclic codes is also discussed. Additional cyclic codes such as RS codes, Golay codes, burst error correction is also discussed. Last chapter presents convolutional codes. Time domain, transform domain approach, code tree, code trellis, state diagram, Viterbi decoding is discussed in detail.

This book is an introduction to information and coding theory at the graduate or advanced undergraduate level. It assumes a basic knowledge of probability and modern algebra, but is otherwise self- contained. The intent is to describe as clearly as possible the fundamental issues involved in these subjects, rather than covering all aspects in an encyclopedic fashion. The first quarter of the book is devoted to information theory, including a proof of Shannon's famous Noisy Coding Theorem. The remainder of the book is devoted to coding theory and is independent of the information theory portion of the book. After a brief discussion of general families of codes, the author discusses linear codes (including the Hamming, Golary, the Reed-Muller codes), finite fields, and cyclic codes (including the BCH, Reed-Solomon, Justesen, Goppa, and Quadratic Residue codes). An appendix reviews relevant topics from modern algebra.

This is a concise, easy-to-read guide, introducing beginners to coding theory and information theory.

This monograph originated with a course of lectures on information theory which I gave at Cornell University during the academic year 1958-1959. It has no pretensions to exhaustiveness, and, indeed, no pretensions at all. Its purpose is to provide, for mathematicians of some maturity, an easy introduction to the ideas and principal known theorems of a certain body of coding theory. This purpose will be amply achieved if the reader is enabled, through his reading, to read the (sometimes obscurely written) literature and to obtain results of his own. The theory is ob viously in a rapid stage of development; even while this monograph was in manuscript several of its readers obtained important new results. The first chapter is introductory and the subject matter of the monograph is described at the end of the chapter. There does not seem to be a uniquely determined logical order in which the material should be arranged. In determining the final arrangement I tried to obtain an order which makes reading easy and yet is not illogical. I can only hope that the resultant compromises do not earn me the criticism that I failed on both counts. There are a very few instances in the monograph where a stated theorem is proved by a method which is based on a result proved only later.