Elements of Information Theory / Edition 2

Elements of Information Theory / Edition 2

ISBN-10:
0471241954
ISBN-13:
9780471241959
Pub. Date:
07/18/2006
Publisher:
Wiley
ISBN-10:
0471241954
ISBN-13:
9780471241959
Pub. Date:
07/18/2006
Publisher:
Wiley
Elements of Information Theory / Edition 2

Elements of Information Theory / Edition 2

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Overview

The latest edition of this classic is updated with new problem sets and material


The Second Edition of this fundamental textbook maintains the book's tradition of clear, thought-provoking instruction. Readers are provided once again with an instructive mix of mathematics, physics, statistics, and information theory.

All the essential topics in information theory are covered in detail, including entropy, data compression, channel capacity, rate distortion, network information theory, and hypothesis testing. The authors provide readers with a solid understanding of the underlying theory and applications. Problem sets and a telegraphic summary at the end of each chapter further assist readers. The historical notes that follow each chapter recap the main points.

The Second Edition features:
* Chapters reorganized to improve teaching
* 200 new problems
* New material on source coding, portfolio theory, and feedback capacity
* Updated references

Now current and enhanced, the Second Edition of Elements of Information Theory remains the ideal textbook for upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in electrical engineering, statistics, and telecommunications.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780471241959
Publisher: Wiley
Publication date: 07/18/2006
Series: Wiley Series in Telecommunications and Signal Processing , #40
Edition description: Revised Edition
Pages: 784
Product dimensions: 6.40(w) x 9.50(h) x 1.62(d)

About the Author

THOMAS M. COVER, PHD, is Professor in the departments of electrical engineering and statistics, Stanford University. A recipient of the 1991 IEEE Claude E. Shannon Award, Dr. Cover is a past president of the IEEE Information Theory Society, a Fellow of the IEEE and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Science. He has authored more than 100 technical papers and is coeditor of Open Problems in Communication and Computation.

JOY A. THOMAS, PHD, is the Chief Scientist at Stratify, Inc., a Silicon Valley start-up specializing in organizing unstructured information. After receiving his PhD at Stanford, Dr. Thomas spent more than nine years at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York. Dr. Thomas is a recipient of the IEEE Charles LeGeyt Fortescue Fellowship.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1: Introduction and Preview

This "first and last lecture" chapter goes backwards and forwards through information theory and its naturally related ideas. The full definitions and study of the subject begin in Chapter 2.

Information theory answers two fundamental questions in communication theory: what is the ultimate data compression (answer: the entropy H), and what is the ultimate transmission rate of communication (answer: the channel capacity C). For this reason some consider information theory to be a subset of communication theory. We will argue that it is much more. Indeed, it has fundamental contributions to make in statistical physics (thermodynamics), computer science (Kolmogorov complexity or algorithmic complexity), statistical inference (Occam's Razor: "The simplest explanation is best") and to probability and statistics (error rates for optimal hypothesis testing and estimation).

Figure 1.1 illustrates the relationship of information theory to other fields. As the figure suggests, information theory intersects physics (statistical mechanics), mathematics (probability theory), electrical engineering (communication theory) and computer science (algorithmic complexity). We now describe the areas of intersection in greater detail:

Electrical Engineering (Communication Theory). In the early 1940s, it was thought that increasing the transmission rate of information over a communication channel increased the probability of error. Shannon surprised the communication theory community by proving that this was not true as long as the communication rate was below channel capacity. The capacity can be simply computed from the noise characteristics of the channel. Shannon further argued that random processes such as music and speech have an irreducible complexity below which the signal cannot be compressed. This he named the entropy, in deference to the parallel use of this word in thermodynamics, and argued that if the entropy of the source is less than the capacity of the channel, then asymptotically error free communication can be achieved.

Information theory today represents the extreme points of the set of all possible communication schemes, as shown in the fanciful Figure 1.2. The data compression minimum I(X; X) lies at one extreme of the set of communication ideas. All data compression schemes require description rates at least equal to this minimum. At the other extreme is the data transmission maximum I(X; Y), known as the channel capacity. Thus all modulation schemes and data compression schemes lie between these limits.

Information theory also suggests means of achieving these ultimate limits of communication. However, these theoretically optimal communication schemes, beautiful as they are, may turn out to be computationally impractical. It is only because of the computational feasibility of simple modulation and demodulation schemes that we use them rather than the random coding and nearest neighbor decoding rule suggested by Shannon's proof of the channel capacity theorem. Progress in integrated circuits and code design has enabled us to reap some of the gains suggested by Shannon's theory. A good example of an application of the ideas of information theory is the use of error correcting codes on compact discs.

Modern work on the communication aspects of information theory has concentrated on network information theory: the theory of the simultaneous rates of communication from many senders to many receivers in a communication network. Some of the trade-offs of rates between senders and receivers are unexpected, and all have a certain mathematical simplicity. A unifying theory, however, remains to be found.

Computer Science (Kolmogorov Complexity). Kolmogorov, Chaitin and Solomonoff put forth the idea that the complexity of a string of data can be defined by the length of the shortest binary program for computing the string. Thus the complexity is the minimal description length. This definition of complexity turns out to be universal, that is, computer independent, and is of fundamental importance. Thus Kolmogorov complexity lays the foundation for the theory of descriptive complexity. Gratifyingly, the Kolmogorov complexity K is approximately equal to the Shannon entropy H if the sequence is drawn at random from a distribution that has entropy H. So the tie-in between information theory and Kolmogorov complexity is perfect. Indeed, we consider Kolmogorov complexity to be more fundamental than Shannon entropy. It is the ultimate data compression and leads to a logically consistent procedure for inference.

There is a pleasing complementary relationship between algorithmic complexity and computational complexity. One can think about computational complexity (time complexity) and Kolmogorov complexity (program length or descriptive complexity) as two axes corresponding to program running time and program length. Kolmogorov complexity focuses on minimizing along the second axis, and computational complexity focuses on minimizing along the first axis. Little work has been done on the simultaneous minimization of the two...

Table of Contents

Contents v

Preface to the Second Edition xv

Preface to the First Edition xvii

Acknowledgments for the Second Edition xxi

Acknowledgments for the First Edition xxiii

1 Introduction and Preview 1

1.1 Preview of the Book 5

2 Entropy, Relative Entropy, and Mutual Information 13

2.1 Entropy 13

2.2 Joint Entropy and Conditional Entropy 16

2.3 Relative Entropy and Mutual Information 19

2.4 Relationship Between Entropy and Mutual Information 20

2.5 Chain Rules for Entropy, Relative Entropy, and Mutual Information 22

2.6 Jensen’s Inequality and Its Consequences 25

2.7 Log Sum Inequality and Its Applications 30

2.8 Data-Processing Inequality 34

2.9 Sufficient Statistics 35

2.10 Fano’s Inequality 37

Summary 41

Problems 43

Historical Notes 54

3 Asymptotic Equipartition Property 57

3.1 Asymptotic Equipartition Property Theorem 58

3.2 Consequences of the AEP: Data Compression 60

3.3 High-Probability Sets and the Typical Set 62

Summary 64

Problems 64

Historical Notes 69

4 Entropy Rates of a Stochastic Process 71

4.1 Markov Chains 71

4.2 Entropy Rate 74

4.3 Example: Entropy Rate of a Random Walk on a Weighted Graph 78

4.4 Second Law of Thermodynamics 81

4.5 Functions of Markov Chains 84

Summary 87

Problems 88

Historical Notes 100

5 Data Compression 103

5.1 Examples of Codes 103

5.2 Kraft Inequality 107

5.3 Optimal Codes 110

5.4 Bounds on the Optimal Code Length 112

5.5 Kraft Inequality for Uniquely Decodable Codes 115

5.6 Huffman Codes 118

5.7 Some Comments on Huffman Codes 120

5.8 Optimality of Huffman Codes 123

5.9 Shannon–Fano–Elias Coding 127

5.10 Competitive Optimality of the Shannon Code 130

5.11 Generation of Discrete Distributions from Fair Coins 134

Summary 141

Problems 142

Historical Notes 157

6 Gambling and Data Compression 159

6.1 The Horse Race 159

6.2 Gambling and Side Information 164

6.3 Dependent Horse Races and Entropy Rate 166

6.4 The Entropy of English 168

6.5 Data Compression and Gambling 171

6.6 Gambling Estimate of the Entropy of English 173

Summary 175

Problems 176

Historical Notes 182

7 Channel Capacity 183

7.1 Examples of Channel Capacity 184

7.1.1 Noiseless Binary Channel 184

7.1.2 Noisy Channel with Nonoverlapping Outputs 185

7.1.3 Noisy Typewriter 186

7.1.4 Binary Symmetric Channel 187

7.1.5 Binary Erasure Channel 188

7.2 Symmetric Channels 189

7.3 Properties of Channel Capacity 191

7.4 Preview of the Channel Coding Theorem 191

7.5 Definitions 192

7.6 Jointly Typical Sequences 195

7.7 Channel Coding Theorem 199

7.8 Zero-Error Codes 205

7.9 Fano’s Inequality and the Converse to the Coding Theorem 206

7.10 Equality in the Converse to the Channel Coding Theorem 208

7.11 Hamming Codes 210

7.12 Feedback Capacity 216

7.13 Source–Channel Separation Theorem 218

Summary 222

Problems 223

Historical Notes 240

8 Differential Entropy 243

8.1 Definitions 243

8.2 AEP for Continuous Random Variables 245

8.3 Relation of Differential Entropy to Discrete Entropy 247

8.4 Joint and Conditional Differential Entropy 249

8.5 Relative Entropy and Mutual Information 250

8.6 Properties of Differential Entropy, Relative Entropy, and Mutual Information 252

Summary 256

Problems 256

Historical Notes 259

9 Gaussian Channel 261

9.1 Gaussian Channel: Definitions 263

9.2 Converse to the Coding Theorem for Gaussian Channels 268

9.3 Bandlimited Channels 270

9.4 Parallel Gaussian Channels 274

9.5 Channels with Colored Gaussian Noise 277

9.6 Gaussian Channels with Feedback 280

Summary 289

Problems 290

Historical Notes 299

10 Rate Distortion Theory 301

10.1 Quantization 301

10.2 Definitions 303

10.3 Calculation of the Rate Distortion Function 307

10.3.1 Binary Source 307

10.3.2 Gaussian Source 310

10.3.3 Simultaneous Description of Independent Gaussian Random Variables 312

10.4 Converse to the Rate Distortion Theorem 315

10.5 Achievability of the Rate Distortion Function 318

10.6 Strongly Typical Sequences and Rate Distortion 325

10.7 Characterization of the Rate Distortion Function 329

10.8 Computation of Channel Capacity and the Rate Distortion Function 332

Summary 335

Problems 336

Historical Notes 345

11 Information Theory and Statistics 347

11.1 Method of Types 347

11.2 Law of Large Numbers 355

11.3 Universal Source Coding 357

11.4 Large Deviation Theory 360

11.5 Examples of Sanov’s Theorem 364

11.6 Conditional Limit Theorem 366

11.7 Hypothesis Testing 375

11.8 Chernoff–Stein Lemma 380

11.9 Chernoff Information 384

11.10 Fisher Information and the Cramér–Rao Inequality 392

Summary 397

Problems 399

Historical Notes 408

12 Maximum Entropy 409

12.1 Maximum Entropy Distributions 409

12.2 Examples 411

12.3 Anomalous Maximum Entropy Problem 413

12.4 Spectrum Estimation 415

12.5 Entropy Rates of a Gaussian Process 416

12.6 Burg’s Maximum Entropy Theorem 417

Summary 420

Problems 421

Historical Notes 425

13 Universal Source Coding 427

13.1 Universal Codes and Channel Capacity 428

13.2 Universal Coding for Binary Sequences 433

13.3 Arithmetic Coding 436

13.4 Lempel–Ziv Coding 440

13.4.1 Sliding Window Lempel–Ziv Algorithm 441

13.4.2 Tree-Structured Lempel–Ziv Algorithms 442

13.5 Optimality of Lempel–Ziv Algorithms 443

13.5.1 Sliding Window Lempel–Ziv Algorithms 443

13.5.2 Optimality of Tree-Structured Lempel–Ziv Compression 448

Summary 456

Problems 457

Historical Notes 461

14 Kolmogorov Complexity 463

14.1 Models of Computation 464

14.2 Kolmogorov Complexity: Definitions and Examples 466

14.3 Kolmogorov Complexity and Entropy 473

14.4 Kolmogorov Complexity of Integers 475

14.5 Algorithmically Random and Incompressible Sequences 476

14.6 Universal Probability 480

14.7 Kolmogorov complexity 482

14.8 Ω 484

14.9 Universal Gambling 487

14.10 Occam’s Razor 488

14.11 Kolmogorov Complexity and Universal Probability 490

14.12 Kolmogorov Sufficient Statistic 496

14.13 Minimum Description Length Principle 500

Summary 501

Problems 503

Historical Notes 507

15 Network Information Theory 509

15.1 Gaussian Multiple-User Channels 513

15.1.1 Single-User Gaussian Channel 513

15.1.2 Gaussian Multiple-Access Channel with m Users 514

15.1.3 Gaussian Broadcast Channel 515

15.1.4 Gaussian Relay Channel 516

15.1.5 Gaussian Interference Channel 518

15.1.6 Gaussian Two-Way Channel 519

15.2 Jointly Typical Sequences 520

15.3 Multiple-Access Channel 524

15.3.1 Achievability of the Capacity Region for the Multiple-Access Channel 530

15.3.2 Comments on the Capacity Region for the Multiple-Access Channel 532

15.3.3 Convexity of the Capacity Region of the Multiple-Access Channel 534

15.3.4 Converse for the Multiple-Access Channel 538

15.3.5 m-User Multiple-Access Channels 543

15.3.6 Gaussian Multiple-Access Channels 544

15.4 Encoding of Correlated Sources 549

15.4.1 Achievability of the Slepian–Wolf Theorem 551

15.4.2 Converse for the Slepian–Wolf Theorem 555

15.4.3 Slepian–Wolf Theorem for Many Sources 556

15.4.4 Interpretation of Slepian–Wolf Coding 557

15.5 Duality Between Slepian–Wolf Encoding and Multiple-Access Channels 558

15.6 Broadcast Channel 560

15.6.1 Definitions for a Broadcast Channel 563

15.6.2 Degraded Broadcast Channels 564

15.6.3 Capacity Region for the Degraded Broadcast Channel 565

15.7 Relay Channel 571

15.8 Source Coding with Side Information 575

15.9 Rate Distortion with Side Information 580

15.10 General Multiterminal Networks 587

Summary 594

Problems 596

Historical Notes 609

16 Information Theory and Portfolio Theory 613

16.1 The Stock Market: Some Definitions 613

16.2 Kuhn–Tucker Characterization of the Log-Optimal Portfolio 617

16.3 Asymptotic Optimality of the Log-Optimal Portfolio 619

16.4 Side Information and the Growth Rate 621

16.5 Investment in Stationary Markets 623

16.6 Competitive Optimality of the Log-Optimal Portfolio 627

16.7 Universal Portfolios 629

16.7.1 Finite-Horizon Universal Portfolios 631

16.7.2 Horizon-Free Universal Portfolios 638

16.8 Shannon–McMillan–Breiman Theorem (General AEP) 644

Summary 650

Problems 652

Historical Notes 655

17 Inequalities in Information Theory 657

17.1 Basic Inequalities of Information Theory 657

17.2 Differential Entropy 660

17.3 Bounds on Entropy and Relative Entropy 663

17.4 Inequalities for Types 665

17.5 Combinatorial Bounds on Entropy 666

17.6 Entropy Rates of Subsets 667

17.7 Entropy and Fisher Information 671

17.8 Entropy Power Inequality and Brunn–Minkowski Inequality 674

17.9 Inequalities for Determinants 679

17.10 Inequalities for Ratios of Determinants 683

Summary 686

Problems 686

Historical Notes 687

Bibliography 689

List of Symbols 723

Index 727

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"As expected, the quality of exposition continues to be a high point of the book. Clear explanations, nice graphical illustrations, and illuminating mathematical derivations make the book particularly useful as a textbook on information theory." (Journal of the American Statistical Association, March 2008)

"This book is recommended reading, both as a textbook and as a reference." (Computing Reviews.com, December 28, 2006)

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