For courses in Digital Communications. Exceptionally accessible, this book presents the often "difficult" concepts of digital communications in an easy-to- understand manner-without diluting the mathematical precision. Using a student-friendly approach, it develops the important techniques in the context of a unified structure (in block diagram form)-providing organization and structure to a field that has, and continues, to grow rapidly, and ensuring that students gain an awareness of the "big picture" even while delving into the details (the most up-to-date modulation, coding, and signal processing techniques that have become the basic tools of our modern era). It traces signals and key processing steps from the information source through the transmitter, channel, receiver, and ultimately to the information sink.