Book excerpt: Teaching the theory of error correcting codes on an introductory level is a difficulttask. The theory, which has immediate hardware applications, also concerns highly abstractmathematical concepts. This text explains the basic circuits in a refreshingly practical way thatwill appeal to undergraduate electrical engineering students as well as to engineers and techniciansworking in industry.Arazi's truly commonsense approach provides a solid grounding in the subject,explaining principles intuitively from a hardware perspective. He fully covers error correctiontechniques, from basic parity check and single error correction cyclic codes to burst errorcorrecting codes and convolutional codes. All this he presents before introducing Galois fieldtheory - the basic algebraic treatment and theoretical basis of the subject, which usually appearsin the opening chapters of standard textbooks. One entire chapter is devoted to specific practicalissues, such as Reed-Solomon codes (used in compact disc equipment), and maximum length sequences(used in various fields of communications). The basic circuits explained throughout the book areredrawn and analyzed from a theoretical point of view for readers who are interested in tackling themathematics at a more advanced level.Benjamin Arazi is an Associate Professor in the Department ofElectrical and Computer Engineering at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. His book is includedin the Computer Systems Series, edited by Herb Schwetman.