Humans have always used communication systems: in the past, native Americans used clouds of smoke, then Chappe invented his telegraph and Edison the telephone, which has deeply changed our lifestyle. Nowadays, smartphones enable us to make calls, watch videos and communicate on social networks. The future will see the emergence of the connected man and wider applications of smart objects. All current and future communication systems rely on a digital communication chain that consists of a source and a destination separated by a transmission channel, which may be a portion of a cable, an optical fiber, a wireless mobile or satellite channel. Whichever the channel, the processing blocks implemented in the communication chain have the same basis. This book aims at detailing them, across two volumes:

• – the first volume deals with source coding and channel coding. After a presentation of the fundamental results of information theory, the different lossless and lossly source coding techniques are studied. Then, error-correcting-codes (block codes, convolutional codes and concatenated codes) are theoretically detailed and their applications provided;
• – the second volume concerns the blocks located after channel coding in the communication chain. It first presents baseband and sine waveform transmissions. Then, the different steps required at the receiver to perform detection, namely synchronization and channel estimation, are studied. Two variants of these blocks which are used in current and future systems, multicarrier modulations and coded modulations, are finally detailed.

This book arises from the long experience of its authors in both the business and academic sectors. The authors are in charge of several diploma and higher-education teaching modules at Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (CNAM) concerning digital communication, information theory and wireless mobile communications.

The different notions in this book are presented with an educational objective. The authors have tried to make the fundamental notions of digital communications as understandable and didactic as possible. Nevertheless, some more advanced techniques that are currently strong research topics but are not yet implemented are also developed.

Digital Communications may interest students in the fields of electronics, telecommunications, signal processing, etc., as well as engineering and corporate executives working in the same domains and wishing to update or complete their knowledge on the subject.

The authors thank their colleagues from CNAM, and especially from the EASY department.

Didier Le Ruyet would like to thank his parents and his wife Christine for their support, patience and encouragements during the writing of this book.

Mylène Pischella would like to thank her daughter Charlotte and husband Benjamin for their presence, affection and support.

Didier LE RUYET
Mylène PISCHELLA
Paris, France
August 2015