This textbook provides a clear and accessible introduction to information theory and coding theory for beginners. Designed to facilitate a thorough understanding of the subject, it combines easy-to-follow explanations with numerous examples and extensive end-of-chapter exercises. The book covers essential topics such as entropy, source coding, channel coding, error-correcting codes, convolutional codes, and decoding.

Suitable for a 15-week undergraduate course, it also serves as an effective resource for self-paced self-study.

Takashi Watanabe received the B.E., M.E., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Osaka, Japan, in 1982, 1984, and 1987, respectively. He joined the Faculty of Engineering, Tokushima University, in 1987, and moved to the Faculty of Engineering, Shizuoka University, in 1990. He was Visiting Researcher with the University of California at Irvine from 1995 to 1996. He was Professor and is currently Professor Emeritus with the Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, the University of Osaka. He is also Dean of the Faculty of Management and Information Sciences at Fukui University of Technology.

His research interests include mobile networking, the Internet of Things, and intelligent systems. He has served on program committees for many networking conferences, such as IEEE, ACM, IPSJ, and IEICE. He is Member of IPSJ and IEICE.

Kazuhiko Kinoshita received the B.E., M.E., and Ph.D. degrees in information systems engineering from Osaka University, Osaka, Japan, in 1996, 1997, and 2003, respectively. From April 1998 to March 2002, he was Assistant Professor at the Department of Information Systems Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University. From April 2002 to March 2008, he was Assistant Professor at the Department of Information Networking, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Osaka University. From April 2008 to January 2015, he was Associate Professor at the same University. Since February 2015, he has been Professor at Tokushima University. His research interests include mobile networks, network management, and agent communications. Dr. Kinoshita is Fellow of IEICE, Senior Member of IEEE, and Member of IPSJ.