Tom Richardson is Vice President and Chief Scientist at Flarion Technologies, Inc., New Jersey. He was awarded his Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 1990 from M.I.T., after which he worked for 10 years at the Bell Labs' Mathematical Sciences Research Center. He is the inventor of over 20 patents. Rüdiger Urbanke is a professor in the School of Computer and Communication Sciences at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland (EPFL). He was awarded his Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 1995 from Washington University, after which he worked for Bell Labs until joining the faculty at EPFL in 1999. He is currently on the board for the 'Foundations and Trends in Communications and Information Theory' series for the IEEE.

• Preface; 1. Introduction; 2. Factor graphs; 3. Binary erasure channel; 4. Binary memoryless symmetric channels; 5. General channels ; 6. Convolutional codes and turbo codes; 7. General ensembles; 8. Expander codes and the flipping algorithm; Appendices: A. Encoding low-density parity-check codes; B. Efficient implementation of density evolution; C. Concentration inequalities; D. Formal power sums.

'There is definitely a market for a book focusing on LDPC codes, and Tom Richardson and Reudiger Urbanke would be on anyone's short list to write that book. They have made substantive contributions to the theory and practice of LDPC codes. I believe this book will become required reading for researchers in LDPC codes at universities and communications companies around the world.' Thomas Fuja, University of Notre Dame

Tom Richardson is Vice President and Chief Scientist at Flarion Technologies, Inc., New Jersey. He was awarded his Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 1990 from M.I.T., after which he worked for 10 years at the Bell Labs' Mathematical Sciences Research Center. He is the inventor of over 20 patents. Rüdiger Urbanke is a professor in the School of Computer and Communication Sciences at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland (EPFL). He was awarded his Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 1995 from Washington University, after which he worked for Bell Labs until joining the faculty at EPFL in 1999. He is currently on the board for the 'Foundations and Trends in Communications and Information Theory' series for the IEEE.

• Preface; 1. Introduction; 2. Factor graphs; 3. Binary erasure channel; 4. Binary memoryless symmetric channels; 5. General channels ; 6. Convolutional codes and turbo codes; 7. General ensembles; 8. Expander codes and the flipping algorithm; Appendices: A. Encoding low-density parity-check codes; B. Efficient implementation of density evolution; C. Concentration inequalities; D. Formal power sums.

'There is definitely a market for a book focusing on LDPC codes, and Tom Richardson and Reudiger Urbanke would be on anyone's short list to write that book. They have made substantive contributions to the theory and practice of LDPC codes. I believe this book will become required reading for researchers in LDPC codes at universities and communications companies around the world.' Thomas Fuja, University of Notre Dame

Tom Richardson is Vice President and Chief Scientist at Flarion Technologies, Inc., New Jersey. He was awarded his Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 1990 from M.I.T., after which he worked for 10 years at the Bell Labs' Mathematical Sciences Research Center. He is the inventor of over 20 patents. Rüdiger Urbanke is a professor in the School of Computer and Communication Sciences at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland (EPFL). He was awarded his Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 1995 from Washington University, after which he worked for Bell Labs until joining the faculty at EPFL in 1999. He is currently on the board for the 'Foundations and Trends in Communications and Information Theory' series for the IEEE.

• Preface; 1. Introduction; 2. Factor graphs; 3. Binary erasure channel; 4. Binary memoryless symmetric channels; 5. General channels ; 6. Convolutional codes and turbo codes; 7. General ensembles; 8. Expander codes and the flipping algorithm; Appendices: A. Encoding low-density parity-check codes; B. Efficient implementation of density evolution; C. Concentration inequalities; D. Formal power sums.

'There is definitely a market for a book focusing on LDPC codes, and Tom Richardson and Reudiger Urbanke would be on anyone's short list to write that book. They have made substantive contributions to the theory and practice of LDPC codes. I believe this book will become required reading for researchers in LDPC codes at universities and communications companies around the world.' Thomas Fuja, University of Notre Dame