15-859V: Introduction to Coding Theory, Spring 2010

Instructor: Venkatesan Guruswami.

Time: Wednesdays & Fridays, 1:30-2:50 PM, GHC 4102

Course Blog: http://errorcorrectingcodes.wordpress.com/

This webpage will be mostly static, except for postings of the problem sets and course notes. Please read the course blog regularly, or subscribe to it via email, or add it to your favorite feed reader (using links available on the blog). We will use the blog to post course related announcements; lecture summaries; problem set hints or corrections, etc.

Office hours: By appointment.

Problem sets


Course notes

The notes (up to Notes 6) are also posted on the course blog. PDF versions are linked below:

Course Description: Error-correcting codes play an important role in many areas of science and engineering. This course is a graduate level introduction to error-correcting codes, with a focus on the theoretical and algorithmic aspects arising in the context of the "channel coding" problem: We want to transmit data over a noisy communication channel so that the receiver can recover the correct data despite the adverse effects of the channel.

Starting from the basics of coding theory and some of the classic theorems of the subject, the course will discuss more recent progress on code constructions and error-correction algorithms. List of potential topics include:


Grading:


Reference materials: We won't follow any particular text for the course. There are many good introductory books on coding theory (see partial list below), but none of them have the same focus and goals as the course. The following lecture notes provide a good coverage of the topics covered in the course:

The basic material on codes we discuss in initial lectures can be found in many books, including Here are some surveys that have a more computer science slant and could be useful for the course:
Last modified: Fri Apr 30 17:39:44 EDT 2010
Maintained by Venkatesan Guruswami