Error control coding

The basic goal in digital communications is to transport bits of information without losing too much information along the way. The level of information loss that is tolerable/acceptable varies for different applications. The loss is measured in terms of the bit error rate, or BER. An interesting application that employs error control coding is a system with a storage medium such as a hard disk drive or a compact disc (CD). We can think of the channel as a block that causes errors to occur when a signal passes through it. Regardless of the error source, we can describe the problem as follows: when the transmitted signal arrives at the receiver after passing through the channel, the received data will have some bits that are in error. The system designer would like to incorporate ways to detect and correct these errors. The field that covers such digital processing techniques is known as error control coding