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

Critical coding techniques have developed over the past few decades for data storage, retrieval and transmission systems, yet they are rarely covered in the graduate curricula. This book provides new researchers in academia and industry with informal introductions to the basic ideas of these topics, including pointers to further reading.

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

An Award-Winning Essayist Plies His Craft Brian Hayes is one of the most accomplished essayists active today—a claim supported not only by his prolific and continuing high-quality output but also by such honors as the National Magazine Award for his commemorative Y2K essay titled "Clock of Ages," published in the November/December 1999 issue of The Sciences magazine. (The also-rans that year included Tom Wolfe, Verlyn Klinkenborg, and Oliver Sacks.) Hayes's work in this genre has also appeared in such anthologies as The BestAmerican Magazine Writing, The Best American Science and NatureWriting, and The Norton Reader. Here he offers us a selection of his most memorable and accessible pieces—including "Clock of Ages"—embellishing them with an overall, scene-setting preface, reconfigured illustrations, and a refreshingly self-critical "Afterthoughts" section appended to each essay.