Basic Concepts in Information Theory and Coding is an outgrowth of a
one- semester introductory course that has been taught at the University
of Southern California since the mid-1960s. Lecture notes from that
course have evolved in response to student reaction, new technological
and theoretical develop- ments, and the insights of faculty members who
have taught the course (in- cluding the three of us). In presenting this
material, we have made it accessible to a broad audience by limiting
prerequisites to basic calculus and the ele- mentary concepts of
discrete probability theory. To keep the material suitable for a
one-semester course, we have limited its scope to discrete information
theory and a general discussion of coding theory without detailed
treatment of algorithms for encoding and decoding for various specific
code classes. Readers will find that this book offers an unusually
thorough treatment of noiseless self-synchronizing codes, as well as the
advantage of problem sections that have been honed by reactions and
interactions of several gen- erations of bright students, while Agent
00111 provides a context for the discussion of abstract concepts.