A guide to error-control block codes for communications engineers. It examines linear block codes, cyclic codes, BCH codes, RS codes, and multilevel block-coded modulation, and provides valuable simulation results to save the reader time in understanding and using error-control block codes. Featuring real-world applications to such technologies as space and mobile communications and compact disks, as well as many illustrations of technique, this book offers itself as a tool for designing and engineering coded transmissions for reliable digital communications. Areas covered include: decoding on erasure channels with block codes or BCH and RS codes; designing efficient coded modulation schemes for bandwidth-constraint channels; decoding BCH and RS codes with Euclid's algorithm; and generating BCH and RS codes.