Principles and practice of information theory. (English) Zbl 0681.94001

Blahut, Richard E.

Addison-Wesley Series in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Reading, Massachusetts etc.: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company. XIV, 458 p. (1987).

This book deals with the principles and techniques of Information Theory in an accessible way, within a good level. For an introductory course on Information Theory several chapters and sections in the book are suggested, but it also contains some sections for purposes of research or advanced courses.
The first chapters examine the discrete case (discrete sources, channels, and random variables). In this way Chapter 1 explains the main objectives, applications and basic concepts in Information Theory, as well as a brief history about this subject. Chapter 2 is devoted to study data translation codes for discrete constrained channels and Chapter 3 is concerned with data compaction codes for discrete sources.
Although the approach to most of the topics in this book is conventional, topics such as Hypotheses Testing (Chapter 4) and Estimation Theory (Chapter 8), and their connections with Information Theory (that are later used in studying codes), are also discussed.
Chapter 5 analyzes the conditions under which good data transmission codes exist. In Chapter 6 arguments motivating the introduction of data compression codes and their study are considered.
From Chapter 7 continuous channels and sources are examined on discrete time instants or a continuum of time points. In particular, Gaussian channels and sources are studied in detail.
Chapter 9 deals with multiterminal information networks (allowing for more than one data source, more than one data user, or more than one channel between them).
Finally, Chapter 10 is devoted to find upper and lower exponential bounds on the performance of the best, or nearly best, block codes for data transmission without finding the codes themselves.

Reviewer: M.A.Gil Alvarez

MSC:

94-01	Introductory exposition (textbooks, tutorial papers, etc.) pertaining to information and communication theory
94A15	Information theory (general)
94A05	Communication theory
94B99	Theory of error-correcting codes and error-detecting codes

Keywords:

data translation codes for discrete constrained channels; data compaction codes for discrete sources; Hypotheses Testing; Estimation Theory; data transmission codes; data compression codes; continuous channels; sources; Gaussian channels; multiterminal information networks; block codes for data transmission