EE 708 – INFORMATION THEORY AND CODING

Course offered in:

2019-20 Spring Semester

Instructors:

B.K. Dey

Course Content:

A major part of the course focusses on Shannon’s source coding and channel coding theorem, and all the tools required to understand them – entropy, information and the ingenious technique of random coding. At the heart of these theorems is lossless source coding – sending information in a lossless manner across a noisy channel. The course also talks about some coding techniques, with the aim that information be sent in as compressed a manner as possible, along with being lossless. The latter half of the course also has an introduction to rate distortion theory.

Prerequisites:

Concepts of EE325 (or any introduction to probability course) are required

Feedback on Lectures:

The lectures are highly organised and structured. The professor used a mixture of slides and the blackboard, and used a sufficient amount of examples. He is adept at varying the pace of content delivery that suits the needs of the students. He also maintained a detailed class log of content (and evaluations) covered over time. It is very useful to maintain notes, as almost every new topic requires understanding of older topics, especially first part of the course, when initially you cover the definitions and techniques required for the theorems and then go about proving them.

Feedback on Tutorials, Assignments and Exams:

Exams were slightly difficult and tested the understanding of the concepts. However, if one follows all the topics covered in class and maintains notes, it is not that challenging to prepare for the exams

Difficulty (on a scale of 1-5 with 5 being very tough) – 4

Attendence Policy:

80% attendance policy was strictly followed. Attendance sheet was passed and total attendance of each student was shared at regular intervals.

Additional Comments & what you learnt from the course: The course can feel slightly abstract at times, especially given that it is heavy on math and proofs. But the content itself is critical and is the backbone of modern communication engineering.

Grading Statistics: AA 4 AB 14 BB 12 BC 4 DD 1 PP 4 Total 39

Study Material and References:

Elements of Information Theory(2 ed) by Cover and Thomas – this is the book that the professor follows for a major chunk of the course; some assignments are problems from the book. While the sequence of topics might be slightly different, the explanations provided are excellent