What Does a Communications Engineer Worry About?

• How many bits per second can I stuff down the pipe
• Without error (lossless coding)
• With specified error margins in my waveform (rate distortion theory)
• Within my power budget (HUH??? Come on, ask me why power has anything to do with it!!!!)
• In short, you will get a complete theoretical view of communications that is elegant and almost universal. My ``sound bite'' is that communications theory is
 
The mathematics of how to tell people (or machines) things they don't
know or cannot predict.

OR

About understanding how to surprise people as much as possible
with things they care about.

Each of these sound bites is a bit deeper than it first looks. By the end of the term, you'll appreciate them (or hate them) in ways you did not think possible.

Oh, and as a by-product, you'll have the basic mathematics firmly enough in hand to understand and understand/undertake research in communications.

1999-01-20