Module content and teaching

Principal aims

To provide the understanding and analytical tools necessary to apply information theory to a range of relevant modern problems in communication engineering. In particular: to convey the source coding and noisy channel theorems; to furnish students with the means to compute information theoretic quantities; to deliver the principles and applications of source codes; to convey the principles and applications of channel codes; to provide exposure to the latest developments in the area.

Students will gain:

• Substantial knowledge of information and entropy, and their use in information theory.
• Principles and practice of data compression.
• Channel capacity of common communication channels.
• Design and performance evaluation of error correcting codes. Knowledge of lossy compression.
• Exposure to emerging topics in information theory, coding and compression.

Principal learning outcomes

By the end of the module students will be able to:

• Demonstrate advanced knowledge and understanding of information and entropy, and their use in information theory.
• Comprehend the principles of data compression, and use these to design and evaluate specific data compression techniques.
• Design and evaluate the error performance of specific error correcting codes.
• Apply the principles of noisy channel analysis to calculate the capacity of common communication channels.
• Demonstrate sound and systematic comprehension of the principles and implementations of lossy compression.