In the past 15 years, there have been several major conceptual and practical advances in coding, modulation, and signal processing for digital data transmission and storage. These have resulted in the realization of data rates approaching theoretical limits for voiceband data modems; areal densities approaching one gigabit per square inch in disk-drives for desk-top computers; and, most recently, end-to-end data transfer reliability achieved at signal-to-noise ratios only slightly beyond the Shannon lower bound. These advances include: the development of trellis-coded modulation for bandwidth-limited channels; the application of communication theory to digital recording channels ; the emergence of a theory of code design for input-constrained channels; and the development of iterative, "turbo"- decoding techniques for long "random" codes. Despite this progress, there remain many fundamental and practical problems that must be addressed, both to better our understanding of existing approaches and their applicability, as well as to offer new tools for use in building future data communications and storage and communication systems. This project will focus on problems in coding and modulation, particularly for application to high density digital recording and multi-user wireless communications. The objective is to develop coded-modulation techniques for efficient data storage and transmission in the presence of various channel impairments, including: input constraints, inter-symbol interference (ISI), co-channel interference (CCI), additive noise, and signal fading. A component of the research will be the investigation of the complexity of algorithms and architectures that implement these techniques. Another goal of the project is to enhance the educational infrastructure by integrating the research results and relevant background material into existing and new engineering courses at UCSD. Courses will be developed on the topics of 1) Coded-Modulation for Data Transmission and Storage, and 2) Symbolic Dynamics and Constrained Coding. --
