Information & Coding Theory Course Outline/ Introduction

Dr. M. Arif Wahla EE Dept arif@mcs.edu.pk Military College of Signals National University of Sciences & Technology (NUST), Pakistan

Class webpage: http://learn.mcs.edu.pk/course/view.php?id=544

Information Theory
Founded by Claude E. Shannon (1916-2001) The Mathematical Theory of Communication, 1948 Study fundamental limits in communications: transmission, storage,

etc

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Course Outline

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Course Outline

Two Key Concepts

Information is uncertainty: modeled as random

variables Information is digital: transmission should be 0s and 1s (bits) with no reference to what they represent

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Course Outline

Two Fundamental Theorems

Source coding theorem

fundamental limit in data compression (zip, MP3, JPEG, MPEG) Channel coding theorem fundamental limit for reliable communication through a noisy channel (telephone, cell phone, modem, data storage, etc)

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Course Outline

Information & Coding Theory

The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point.

(Claude Shannon, 1948)

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Course Outline

Course Outline

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Course Outline

Course Objective (3+0)

This course will provide the students an introduction to

classical information theory and coding theory. The main course objective is to introduce the students to wellknown information theoretic tools that can be used to solve engineering problems.
The course will begin by describing basic communication

systems problems where information theory may be applied. An explanation of information measurement and characterization will be given. Fundamentals of noiseless source coding and noisy channel coding will be taught next. Finally, some key information theory principles applied to communication security systems will be covered.

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Course Outline

Course Outline -I
Information theory is concerned with the fundamental limits of communication.
What is the ultimate limit to data compression? e.g. how many bits

are required to represent a music source.

What is the ultimate limit of reliable communication over a noisy

channel, e.g. how many bits can be sent in one second over a telephone line.

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Course Outline

Course Outline -II

Coding theory is concerned with practical techniques to realize the limits specified by information theory
Source coding converts source output to bits. Source output can be voice, video, text, sensor output
Channel coding adds extra bits to data transmitted over the channel This redundancy helps combat the errors introduced in transmitted bits due to channel noise

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Main Topics to be Covered

Introduction
Communications Model Information Sources Source Coding Channel Coding

Information Measurement
Definition and Properties of Entropy Uniqueness of the Entropy Measure Joint and Conditional Entropy Mutual Information and Conditional Mutual Information Information Divergence Measures

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Main Topics to be Covered

Noiseless Source Coding Optimum Codes Shannons Source Coding Theorem Huffman Codes Lemple Ziv Codes Arithmetic Coding Channel Capacity Capacity of Memoryless Symmetric Channels Capacity of Erasure Channels Shannons Channel Coding Theorem Channel Codes (Error Correcting Codes) Block Codes Cyclic codes Convolutional Codes Turbo Codes Space Time Codes

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Main Topics to be Covered

Secrecy Systems Mathematical Structure Pure and Mixed Ciphers Similar Systems Perfect Secrecy Equivocation Characteristic Ideal Secrecy

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Recommended Text Books & Study Material

Applied Coding and Theory for Engineers Richard B. Wells, Prentice Hall, 1999.

A Mathematical Theory of Communication, Claude E. Shannon, Bell System Technical Journal, 1948 available for free on line

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Class Webpage/ Learning management system

Class webpage:
https://lms.nust.edu.pk/portal/course/view.php?id=9944

Lecture Notes, Reading material and Assignments will be posted here. 1. Sessional marks and exam results will be uploaded 2. Students are encouraged to maintain a discussion blog and discuss the assignments and course topics

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Course Outline

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Recommended Text Books & Study Material

Applied Coding and Theory for Engineers Richard B. Wells, Prentice Hall, 1999.

A Mathematical Theory of Communication, Claude E. Shannon, Bell System Technical Journal, 1948 available for free on line

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Schedule
Class Meetings Wednesday (5pm-8pm) 3L

Consultancy Hours Wednesday (4pm-5pm), (8pm-8:30pm) Other times by appointment (phone or email)

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Teaching Methodology
Organized material will be presented in PPT slides. Concepts, mathematical expressions and examples will be performed on board

OR writing on transparency using Overhead Projector.

Reading assignments far the next lecture. Assignments: Frequency 8 Every second week Quiz: Frequency 4 Preferably at the end of logical segment of topics (Not necessarily unanounced) Resources:
Lectures will be posted on class webpage

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Grading Scheme & Policy Matters

Assignments [10%] Assignments will be due after one week from the issue date Quizzes [10%] Quizzes may be conducted in class during the first 5-10 minutes NUST policy does not permit quizzes to be retaken under any circumstances

Found assisting or committing plagiarism in any assignment or quiz

will have their assignment and quiz marks cancelled OR marks would be shared by the group having similar solution
OHT 1&2 [30%] Exam during 7th & 11th week

Research Paper Project [10%]

Final Exam [40%] Exam during 18th week (9 -15January 2014) NUST policy requires at least 80% attendance to be maintained in order to be

allowed to sit the Final Exam.

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Introduction to Information Theory

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What is Information Theory (IT)?

IT is about asking what is the most efficient path

from one point to another, in terms of some way of measuring things.

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What is Information Theory (IT)?

Politics Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country - John F. Kennedy
What makes the this political statements powerful (or at least

famous)?
force is efficiency of expression, there is an interpolation of many feelings,

attitudes and perceptions; there is an efficient encoding of emotional and mental information.

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Information Theory
Two important questions in engineering: - What to do if information gets corrupted by errors?

- How much memory does it require to store data?

Both questions were asked and to a large degree answered by Shannon in his 1948 article: use error correction and data compression.
Claude Elwood Shannon (1916 2001), American electrical engineer and mathematician, has been called the father of information theory, and was the founder of practical digital circuit design theory.

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Problems in Communications
Speed Minimise length of transmitted data Accuracy Minimise and eliminate noise Security Ensure data is not changed or intercepted whilst in transit

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Solutions
Speed Minimise length of transmitted data Use Data Compression Accuracy Minimise and eliminate noise Use Error Detection / Correction Codes Security Ensure data is not changed or intercepted whilst in transit Use Data Encryption / Authentication
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Communications Model

Source data

Evesdropper

Destination data

signal Transmitter

received signal

Receiver

noise

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Data Compression
This is the study of encoding information so that it may be

stored or transmitted efficiently.

Examples: WinZip, GSM Algorithms: Run Length Encoding (RLE), Huffman,

LZ77, LZW, Deflate (WinZip)

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Error Detecting/Correcting Codes

Error detection is the ability to detect errors that are

made due to noise or other impairments in the course of the transmission from the transmitter to the receiver.
Error correction has the additional feature that enables

locating the errors and correcting them.

Examples: Compact Disc, DVD, GSM Algorithms: Check Digit, Parity Bit, CRC, Hamming

Code, Reed-Solomon Code, Convolutional Codes, Turbo Codes and LDPC Codes
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Coding in the Communications Model

Source data signal Evesdropper Destination data received signal

Transmitter

Receiver

noise

Source Coding

Channel Coding

Compression

Encryption

Error Correction Coding

Modulation

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What is information?

information: [m-w.org]
1: the communication or reception of knowledge or intelligence

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What is an information source?

An information source produces a message or a sequence

of messages to be communicated to a destination or receiver On a finer granularity, an information source produces symbols to be communicated to the destination In this lecture, we will focus on discrete sources
i.e., sources that produce discrete symbols from a predefined

alphabet

However, most of these concepts can be extended to

continuous sources as well

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What is an information source?

Intuitively, an information source having more symbols

should have more information For instance, consider a source, say S1, that wants to communicate its direction to a destination using the following symbols:
North (N), South (S), East (E), West (W)

Another source, say S2, can communicate its direction

using:
North (N), South (S), East (E), West (W), Northwest (NW),

Northeast (NE), Southwest (SW), Southeast (SE)

Intuitively, all other things being equally likely, S2 has

more information than S1

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Minimum number of bits for a source

Before we formally define information, let us try to

answer the following question:

What is the minimum number of bits/symbol required to communicate an information source having n symbols?

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Minimum number of bits for a source

What is the minimum number of bits/symbol required to communicate an information source having n symbols?
A simple answer is that log2(n) bits are required to

represent n symbols
2 symbols: 0, 1
4 symbols: 00, 01, 10, 11 8 symbols: 000, 001, 010, 011, 100, 101, 110, 111

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Minimum number of bits for a source

Let there be a source X that wants to communicate

information of its direction to a destination

i.e., n=4 symbols: North (N), South (S), East (E), West (W)

According to our previous definition, log2(4)=2 bits are

required to represent each symbol

N: 00, S: 01, E: 10, W: 11

If 1000 symbols are generated by X, how many bits are required to transmit these 1000 symbols?

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Minimum number of bits for a source

Let there be a source X that wants to communicate information

of its direction to a destination

i.e., n=4 symbols: North (N), South (S), East (E), West (W)

According to our previous definition, log2(4)=2 bits are

required to represent each symbol

N: 00, S: 01, E: 10, W: 11

If 1000 symbols are generated by X, how many bits are required to transmit these 1000 symbols?

2000 bits are required to communicate 1000 symbols 2 bits/symbol

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Minimum number of bits for a source

Thus we need two bits/symbol to communicate the information of a

source X with 4 symbols

Lets reiterate our original question:

What is the minimum number of bits/symbol required to communicate an information source having n symbols? (n=4 in present example)
In fact, lets rephrase the question as:

Are 2 bits/symbol the minimum number of bits/symbol required to communicate an information source having n=4 symbols?

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Minimum number of bits for a source

Are 2 bits/symbol the minimum number of bits/symbol required to communicate an information source having n=4 symbols? The correct answer is NO! Lets see an example to emphasize this point

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Minimum number of bits for a source

So far in this example, we implicitly assumed that all

symbols are equally likely to occur

Lets now assume that symbols are generated according to

a probability mass function pX

pX 0.6 0.3 0.05 N S E W X

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Minimum number of bits for a source

pX 0.6 0.3 0.05 N S E W X

Let us map the symbols to the following bit sequences: N: 0 S: 01 E: 011 W: 0111

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Minimum number of bits for a source

pX 0.6

N: 0 S: 01 E: 011 W: 0111

0.3 0.05 N S E W X

Now if 1000 symbols are generated by X, how many bits are required to transmit these 1000 symbols?

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Minimum number of bits for a source

pX 0.6

N: 0 S: 01 E: 011 W: 0111

0.3 0.05 N S E W X

Now if 1000 symbols are generated by X, how many bits are required to transmit these 1000 symbols?
On average, the 1000 symbols will have: 600 Ns, 300 Ss, 50 Es and 50 Ws

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Minimum number of bits for a source

pX
N: 0 S: 01 E: 011 W: 0111 0.6 0.3 0.05 N S E W X

Now if 1000 symbols are generated by X, how many bits are required to transmit these 1000 symbols? 600 Ns, 300 Ss, 50 Es and 50 Ws Total bits=6001+3002+503+504=1550

1550 bits are required to communicate 1000 symbols 1.55 bits/symbol

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Minimum number of bits for a source

pX
N: 0 S: 01 E: 011 W: 0111 0.6 0.3 0.05 N S E W X

1550 bits are required to communicate 1000 symbols 1.55 bits/symbol

The bit mapping defined in this example is generally called a code And the process of defining this code is called source coding or source compression The mapped symbols (0, 01, 011 and 0111) are called codewords
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Minimum number of bits for a source

Coming back to our original question:

Are 1.55 bits/symbol the minimum number of bits/symbol required to communicate an information source having n=4 symbols?

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Minimum number of bits for a source

Are 1.55 bits/symbol the minimum number of bits/symbol required to communicate an information source having n=4 symbols? The correct answer is I dont know!
To answer this question, we first need to know the

minimum number of bits/symbol for a source with 4 symbols

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Information content of a source

The minimum number of bits/symbol required to

communicate the symbols of a source is the information content of the source How to find a code that can provide the minimum information is a different question However, we can quantify the information of a source without knowing the code(s) that can achieve this minimum In this lecture, we will refer to the minimum number of bits/symbol of a source as the information content of the source

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Information content of a source

We start quantification of a sources information content

using a simple question

Recall from our earlier example that we assigned less

number of bits to symbols with high probabilities

pX
0.6 to represent the source Will the number of bits required

increase or decrease if we assign longer codewords to 0.3 more probable symbols?

0.05 N S E W X

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Minimum number of bits for a source

pX
0.6

N: 0111 S: 011 E: 01 W: 0

0.3 0.05 N S E W X

Now if 1000 symbols are generated by X, how many bits are required to transmit these 1000 symbols?
Total bits=6004+3003+502+501=3450 3.45 bits/symbol

These are more bits than we would need if we assumed all symbols to be equally likely
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Information content of a source

So in the worst-case scenario, we can simply ignore the

probability of each symbol and assign an equal-length codeword to each symbol

i.e., we are inherently assuming that all symbols are equally

likely

The total number of bits required in this case will be

log2(n), where n is the total number of symbols

Using this coding, we will always be able to communicate

all the symbols of the source

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Information content of a source

If we assume equally-likely symbols, we will always be

able to communicate all the symbols of the source using log2(n) bits/symbol
In other words, this is the maximum number of bits

required to communicate any discrete source

But if a sources symbols are in fact equally likely, what is

the minimum number of bits required to communicate this source?

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Information content of uniform sources

If the sources symbols are in fact equally likely, what is the

minimum number of bits required to communicate this source?

The minimum number of bits required to represent a source with

equally-likely symbols is log2(n) bits/symbol

Such sources are sometimes called uniform sources
pX 1/n

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Information content of uniform sources

The minimum number of bits required to represent a

discrete uniform source is log2(n) bits/symbol

For any discrete source where all symbols are not equally-

likely (i.e., non-uniform source), log2(n) represents the maximum number of bits/symbol Among all discrete sources producing a given number of n symbols, a uniform source has the highest information content
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Information content of uniform sources

The minimum number of bits required to represent a

discrete source with equally-likely symbols is log2(n) bits/symbol

Now consider two uniform sources S1 and S2

Let n1 and n2 respectively represent the total number of

symbols for the two sources with n1 > n2

Which uniform source has higher information content?

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Information content of uniform sources

Two uniform sources S1 and S1 n1 and n2 respectively represent the total number of

symbols for the two sources with n1 > n2

Which source has higher information content?

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Information content of uniform sources

Two uniform sources S1 and S1 n1 and n2 respectively represent the total number of

symbols for the two sources with n1 > n2

Which source has higher information content?

S1 has more information than S2

For example, compare the (North, South, East, West)

source with a source having the symbols (North, South, East, West, Northwest, Northeast, Southeast, Southwest)
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Information content of uniform sources

Thus if there are multiple sources with equally-likely

symbols, the source with the maximum number of symbols has the maximum information content
In other words, for equally likely sources, a function H(.)

that quantifies information content of a source should be an increasing function of the number of symbols
Lets call this function H(n)

Any ideas what H(n) should be?

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Information content of uniform sources

You should convince yourself that for a uniform source:

H(n) = log2(n)

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Information content of non-uniform sources

Generally, information sources do not have equally-likely

symbols; i.e., they are non-uniform

An example is the frequency distribution of letters in the

English language

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Information content of a non-uniform source

Normalized frequencies of letters in the English

language:

Image courtesy of Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_frequencies

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Information content of a non-uniform source

Since in general symbols are not equally-likely, source

compression can be achieved by designing a code that:

assigns more number of bits to less likely symbols, and

assigns less number of bits to more likely symbols

As more likely symbols will occur more often than less

likely ones, the total number of bits required by a code having the above properties will be less than log2(n)

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Information content of a non-uniform source

A function to quantify the information content of a non-

uniform source X should be a function of the probability distribution pX of X, say H(pX)

Since more bits are assigned to less likely symbols, H(pX)

should increase as pX decreases

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Information content of a non-uniform source

Since more bits are assigned to less likely symbols, H(pX) should

increase as pX decreases
The following function has been proven to provide the right

quantification for a given symbol i: H(pX=i)=log2(1/pX=i)

Since pX=i 1, H(pX=i) is always positive

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Information content of a non-uniform source

For a given symbol i, the information content of that

symbol is given by: H(pX=i)=log2(1/pX=i) So what is the expected or average value of the information content of all the symbols of pX?

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Information content of a non-uniform source

What is the expected or average value of the information content of all the symbols of a source with probability pX?
This expected value should be the weighted average of the

information content of all the symbols of a source with probability pX:

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Information content of a non-uniform source

The information content of a discrete source with symbol distribution pX is:

This is called the entropy of the source and represents the minimum expected number of bits/symbol required to communicate this source
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Information content of a non-uniform source

Before finishing our discussion on information sources, apply the formula for entropy on a uniform source:

pX 1/n

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Information content of a non-uniform source

Before finishing our discussion on information sources, apply the formula for entropy on a uniform source:

Note that this is the same function that we had deduced earlier

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