Introduction

Abstract

People work with information. All the time. In everything they do. To be useful, this information needs to be transported. This transportation of information, known as communication, can adopt several forms: making a telephone call, reading a newspaper, chatting with friends, downloading music onto your computer, etc. Nowadays, a growing amount of information is stored and transported in a digital format. Compared to analog data, digital data is easier to store, process and transport. This explains the continuing quest for faster, cheaper and more power efficient digital communication systems. Three important types of communication channels will be considered in this work: wireline channels, wireless channels and optical channels.