Course Information

Instructor: Tobias Oechtering, Communication Theory Lab.

Prerequisite: Information Theory and Channel Coding corresponding to F2E5316 or equivalent.

Course Literature:

• Network Information Theory by A. El Gamal and Y.-H. Kim
  (sufficient substitution: Lecture Notes on Network Information Theory by A. El Gamal and Y.-H. Kim (available under arXiv:1001.3404v1))
• Information Theory and Network Coding by R. Yeung.
• Topics in Multi-User Information Theory by G. Kramer, 2007 (NOW Foundations and Trends in Communications and Information Theory).
• Information Theory - Coding theorems for discrete memoryless channels by I. Csiszár and J. Körner.
• Elements of Information Theory by T. Cover and J. Thomas.

Course Grade Scale: Pass or Fail.

Credits: 8 hp.

Language: The course will be taught completely in English.

Learning Activities:

• Individual Reading
• Lectures
  • Five Minute Recapitulation
  • Five Minute Exercise
• Five Homework Sets
  • Literature Survey
  • Problem Solving Exercises
  • Personal Conclusion
  • Peer Assessment
• Final Review and/or Presentation

Homeworks: The main focus is on problem solving exercises. The homework handling process mimics a journal paper submission procedure where the students act as author and reviewer and the teacher acts as editor. Homework assignments will be handed out at the meetings. The deadline for handing in solutions for the assignment depends on the homework and will be announced. There will be five homework sets. Each homework set consists of problem solving exercises and a survey exercise (either literature survey or personal conclusion) related to the lecture topic. For the problem solving exercise the students are allowed to discuss with each other, but everybody has to write down and hand in its own solution. Everybody who hands in a solution of a homework has to do peer assessment of another students homework. An overall grading of the solution has to be done, which has to be justified with specific enough reasons in a short essay and has to be hand in after one week. The grades are related to a paper review process:

• Accept: The problem solutions and the essay are not only correct, they are well-written.
• Minor Revision: Two-thirds of the problem solutions have only minor flaws, the essay is reasonable.
• Major Revision: The problem solutions have flaws, but the broad ideas are shown.
• Reject: The problem solutions have substantial flaws.

The teacher independently grades the solution of the homework set AND the students assessment essay! For course passing only the grade from the teacher counts. Note that a bad peer-assessment may lead to lower overall grade for a certain homework assignment!

Final Review or Presentation: After the lecture period every student has to do either

• a review of a pre-print work published on ArXiv.org in section math.IT which is not accepted for publication yet, explain the work and the review to the teacher, or
• give a presentation of a published Trans IT paper and lead the discussion afterwards.

The teacher will provide a list of appropriate articles; the student may suggest an article. The topics of possible papers must be within the scope of the lecture. The review has to be hand in three weeks after the last lecture. The presentation has to be done within five weeks after the last lecture. The teacher assesses this learning activity with pass or fail.

Course Passing Criterion: Based on the above, to pass the course the student needs:

• From 5 homework sets (only the teachers grade count) at least either:
  • 3 Accept
  • 3 Minor Revision + 1 Major Revision
  • 2 Minor Revision +3 Major Revision
• A passed review or presentation