This book discusses both the theory and practical applications of self-correcting data, commonly known as error-correcting codes. The applications included demonstrate the importance of these codes in a wide range of everyday technologies, from smartphones to secure communications and transactions. Written in a readily understandable style, the book presents the authors’ twenty-five years of research organized into five parts: Part I is concerned with the theoretical performance attainable by using error correcting codes to achieve communications efficiency in digital communications systems. Part II explores the construction of error-correcting codes and explains the different families of codes and how they are designed. Techniques are described for producing the very best codes. Part III addresses the analysis of low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes, primarily to calculate their stopping sets and low-weight codeword spectrum which determines the performance of th ese codes. Part IV deals with decoders designed to realize optimum performance. Part V describes applications which include combined error correction and detection, public key cryptography using Goppa codes, correcting errors in passwords and watermarking. This book is a valuable resource for anyone interested in error-correcting codes and their applications, ranging from non-experts to professionals at the forefront of research in their field. This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.

It is a great pleasure to be asked to write the Preface for this book on trellis decoding of error correcting block codes. The subject is extremely significant both theoretically and practically, and is very timely because of recent devel opments in the microelectronic implementation and range of application of error-control coding systems based on block codes. The authors have been notably active in signal processing and coding research and development for several years, and therefore very well placed to contribute to the state of the art on the subject of trellis decoding. In particular, the book represents a unique approach to many practical aspects of the topic. As the authors point out, there are two main classes of error control codes: block codes and convolutinal codes. Block codes came first historically and have a well-developed mathematical structure. Convolutional codes come later, and have developed heuristically, though a more formal treatment has emerged via recent developments in the theory of symbolic dynamics. Max imum likelihood (ML) decoding of powerful codes in both these classes is computationally complex in the general case; that is, ML decoding fails into the class of NP-hard computational problems. This arieses because the de coding complexity is an exponential function of key parameters of the code.

This book is devoted to one of the essential functions of modern telecommunications systems: channel coding or error correction coding. Its main topic is iteratively decoded algebraic codes, convolutional codes and concatenated codes.

How can one exchange information e?ectively when the medium of com- nication introduces errors? This question has been investigated extensively starting with the seminal works of Shannon (1948) and Hamming (1950), and has led to the rich theory of “error-correcting codes”. This theory has traditionally gone hand in hand with the algorithmic theory of “decoding” that tackles the problem of recovering from the errors e?ciently. This thesis presents some spectacular new results in the area of decoding algorithms for error-correctingcodes. Speci?cally,itshowshowthenotionof“list-decoding” can be applied to recover from far more errors, for a wide variety of err- correcting codes, than achievable before. A brief bit of background: error-correcting codes are combinatorial str- tures that show how to represent (or “encode”) information so that it is - silient to a moderate number of errors. Speci?cally, an error-correcting code takes a short binary string, called the message, and shows how to transform it into a longer binary string, called the codeword, so that if a small number of bits of the codewordare ?ipped, the resulting string does not look like any other codeword. The maximum number of errorsthat the code is guaranteed to detect, denoted d, is a central parameter in its design. A basic property of such a code is that if the number of errors that occur is known to be smaller than d/2, the message is determined uniquely. This poses a computational problem,calledthedecodingproblem:computethemessagefromacorrupted codeword, when the number of errors is less than d/2.

This book introduces turbo error correcting concept in a simple language, including a general theory and the algorithms for decoding turbo-like code. It presents a unified framework for the design and analysis of turbo codes and LDPC codes and their decoding algorithms. A major focus is on high speed turbo decoding, which targets applications with data rates of several hundred million bits per second (Mbps).

The past few years have witnessed significant developments in algebraic coding theory. This book provides an advanced treatment of the subject from an engineering perspective, covering the basic principles and their application in communications and signal processing. Emphasis is on codes defined on the line, on the plane, and on curves, with the core ideas presented using commutative algebra and computational algebraic geometry made accessible using the Fourier transform. Starting with codes defined on a line, a background framework is established upon which the later chapters concerning codes on planes, and on curves, are developed. The decoding algorithms are developed using the standard engineering approach applied to those of Reed-Solomon codes, enabling them to be evaluated against practical applications. Integrating recent developments in the field into the classical treatment of algebraic coding, this is an invaluable resource for graduate students and researchers in telecommunications and applied mathematics.

This monograph is a thoroughly revised and extended version of the author's PhD thesis, which was selected as the winning thesis of the 2002 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Competition. Venkatesan Guruswami did his PhD work at the MIT with Madhu Sudan as thesis adviser. Starting with the seminal work of Shannon and Hamming, coding theory has generated a rich theory of error-correcting codes. This theory has traditionally gone hand in hand with the algorithmic theory of decoding that tackles the problem of recovering from the transmission errors efficiently. This book presents some spectacular new results in the area of decoding algorithms for error-correcting codes. Specificially, it shows how the notion of list-decoding can be applied to recover from far more errors, for a wide variety of error-correcting codes, than achievable before The style of the exposition is crisp and the enormous amount of information on combinatorial results, polynomial time list decoding algorithms, and applications is presented in well structured form.