Rorabaugh presents error control coding at the elementary level. This is the first book on this subject to include a disk with C/C++ routines for the encoding and decoding. The theory is simplified and compressed, so the book should be useful for self-study by engineers interested in practical applications. It could also serve as a supplementary text for students taking a course with a more advanced theoretical text but with no software.

An introductory chapter provides a simple exposition of the Galois field arithmetic necessary for encoding and decoding operations. Following this, the main text gives equal coverage to block and convolutional codes, with software modules provided for each. Berlekamp decoding is given for block control header (BCH) block codes, and both Viterbi decoding and sequential decoding are given for convolutional codes. The author argues that BCH and Reed-Solomon codes together account for approximately 80 percent of all block codes in practical use, but he fails to mention that Reed-Solomon codes are the bulk of this 80 percent. It is thus a shortcoming of this book that Reed-Solomon codes are only given two pages of text, and that there is no software for the error evaluation necessary for Reed-Solomon decoding.

This error control cookbook gives only recipes for appetizers, and will not provide instant solutions to most coding problems in the workplace. However, it will serve as a valuable aid for engineers with limited backgrounds in the field.