This book presents the ideas and techniques fundamental to digital communication

systems. Emphasis is placed on syste1n design goals and on the need for trade-offs
among basic system parameters such as signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), probability of
error, and bandwidth expenditure. We shall deal with the transn1ission of informa-
tion (voice, video, or data) over a path (channel) that may consist of wires, wave-
guides, or space.
Digital communication systems are becoming increasingly attractive because
of the ever-growing demand for data communication and because digital transmis-
sion offers data processing options and flexibilities not available \vith analog trans-
mission. In this book, a digital system is often treated in the context of a satellite
communications link. Sometimes the treatment is in the context of a mobile radio
system, in which case signal transmission typically suffers from a phenon1eoon
called fading. In general, the task of characterizing and mitigating the degradation
effects of a fading channel is 1nore challenging than performing similar tasks for a
nonfading channel.
The principal feature of a digital communication system (DCS) is that during
a finite interval of time, it sends a waveform from a finite set of possible wave-
forms, in contrast to an analog communication systen1, which sends a waveform
from an infinite variety of waveform shapes with theoretically infinite resolution.
In a D CS, the objective at the receiver is not to reproduce a transmitted waveform
with precision; instead, the objective is to determine from a noise-perturbed signal
which waveform from the finite set of waveforms was sent by the transmitter.
An important measure of system perfonnance in a DCS is the probability of er-
ror (Pe).

2 Signals and Spectra Chap. 1