It is gratifying that this textbook is still sufficiently popular to warrant a third edition. I have used the opportunity to improve and enlarge the book. When the second edition was prepared, only two pages on algebraic geometry codes were added. These have now been removed and replaced by a relatively long chapter on this subject. Although it is still only an introduction, the chapter requires more mathematical background of the reader than the remainder of this book. One of the very interesting recent developments concerns binary codes defined by using codes over the alphabet 7l.4• There is so much interest in this area that a chapter on the essentials was added. Knowledge of this chapter will allow the reader to study recent literature on 7l. -codes. 4 Furthermore, some material has been added that appeared in my Springer Lec ture Notes 201, but was not included in earlier editions of this book, e. g. Generalized Reed-Solomon Codes and Generalized Reed-Muller Codes. In Chapter 2, a section on "Coding Gain" ( the engineer's justification for using error-correcting codes) was added. For the author, preparing this third edition was a most welcome return to mathematics after seven years of administration. For valuable discussions on the new material, I thank C.P.l.M.Baggen, I. M.Duursma, H.D.L.Hollmann, H. C. A. van Tilborg, and R. M. Wilson. A special word of thanks to R. A. Pellikaan for his assistance with Chapter 10.

Coding theory is still a young subject. One can safely say that it was born in 1948. It is not surprising that it has not yet become a fixed topic in the curriculum of most universities. On the other hand, it is obvious that discrete mathematics is rapidly growing in importance. The growing need for mathe maticians and computer scientists in industry will lead to an increase in courses offered in the area of discrete mathematics. One of the most suitable and fascinating is, indeed, coding theory. So, it is not surprising that one more book on this subject now appears. However, a little more justification of the book are necessary. A few years ago it was and a little more history remarked at a meeting on coding theory that there was no book available an introductory course on coding theory (mainly which could be used for for mathematicians but also for students in engineering or computer science). The best known textbooks were either too old, too big, too technical, too much for specialists, etc. The final remark was that my Springer Lecture Notes (# 201) were slightly obsolete and out of print. Without realizing what I was getting into I announced that the statement was not true and proved this by showing several participants the book Inleiding in de Coderingstheorie, a little book based on the syllabus of a course given at the Mathematical Centre in Amsterdam in 1975 (M. C. Syllabus 31).

This 2006 book introduces the theoretical foundations of error-correcting codes for senior-undergraduate to graduate students.

Algebraic coding theory is a new and rapidly developing subject, popular for its many practical applications and for its fascinatingly rich mathematical structure. This book provides an elementary yet rigorous introduction to the theory of error-correcting codes. Based on courses given by the author over several years to advanced undergraduates and first-year graduated students, this guide includes a large number of exercises, all with solutions, making the book highly suitable for individual study.

This book is intended to introduce coding theory and information theory to undergraduate students of mathematics and computer science. It begins with a review of probablity theory as applied to finite sample spaces and a general introduction to the nature and types of codes. The two subsequent chapters discuss information theory: efficiency of codes, the entropy of information sources, and Shannon's Noiseless Coding Theorem. The remaining three chapters deal with coding theory: communication channels, decoding in the presence of errors, the general theory of linear codes, and such specific codes as Hamming codes, the simplex codes, and many others.

Coding theory is concerned with successfully transmitting data through a noisy channel and correcting errors in corrupted messages. It is of central importance for many applications in computer science or engineering. This book gives a comprehensive introduction to coding theory whilst only assuming basic linear algebra. It contains a detailed and rigorous introduction to the theory of block codes and moves on to more advanced topics like BCH codes, Goppa codes and Sudan's algorithm for list decoding. The issues of bounds and decoding, essential to the design of good codes, features prominently. The authors of this book have, for several years, successfully taught a course on coding theory to students at the National University of Singapore. This book is based on their experiences and provides a thoroughly modern introduction to the subject. There are numerous examples and exercises, some of which introduce students to novel or more advanced material.

This book is designed to be usable as a textbook for an undergraduate course or for an advanced graduate course in coding theory as well as a reference for researchers in discrete mathematics, engineering and theoretical computer science. This second edition has three parts: an elementary introduction to coding, theory and applications of codes, and algebraic curves. The latter part presents a brief introduction to the theory of algebraic curves and its most important applications to coding theory.