The field of digital communication has evolved rapidly in the past few decades, with commercial applications proliferating in wireline communication networks (e.g., digital subscriber loop, cable, fiber optics), wireless communication (e.g., cell phones and wireless local area networks), and storage media (e.g., compact discs, hard drives). The typical undergraduate and graduate student is drawn to the field because of these applications, but is often intimidated by the mathematical background necessary to understand communication theory. A good lecturer in digital communication alleviates this fear by means of examples, and covers only the concepts that directly impact the applications being studied. The purpose of this text is to provide such a lecture style exposition to provide an accessible, yet rigorous, introduction to the subject of digital communication. This book is also suitable for self-study by practitioners who wish to brush up on fundamental concepts.

The book can be used as a basis for one course, or a two course sequence, in digital communication. The following topics are covered: complex baseband representation of signals and noise (and its relation to modern transceiver implementation); modulation (emphasizing linear modulation); demodulation (starting from detection theory basics); communication over dispersive channels, including equalization and multicarrier modulation; computation of performance benchmarks using information theory; basics of modern coding strategies (including convolutional codes and turbo-like codes); and introduction to wireless communication. The choice of material reflects my personal bias, but the concepts covered represent a large subset of the tricks of the trade.