Fundamentals of Information Theory and Coding Design (Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications)

"This book is one of the few (if not the only) texts that comprehensively deal with both the fundamentals of information theory and coding theory. The extensive use of worked examples throughout the text, especially in the more theoretical chapters 6 and 7, will greatly aid students understanding of the principles and methods discussed. The highlighting of definitions, theorems and results allows students to quickly identify and remember the important concepts. The exercise sets at the end of each chapter are quite complete with the routine questions balanced by more challenging and interesting questions. The introduction to the main concepts of abstract algebra used for the design of advanced error detecting and error correcting codes is rigorous, complete and the use of many worked examples makes it one of the best I have seen. The material is also quite extensive with discussions on additivity of mutual information, implementation details of arithmetic coding, rate distortion theory and the important Hamming and Gilbert bounds for channel codes. Overall, this is an excellent and timely textbook for senior undergraduate courses in information and coding theory for students in computer science, mathematics, and engineering." -Li Deng, Ph.D., Senior Researcher, Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA, USA