Editorial [Intro. to the Special Issue]

This special issue on the use of coding and error-control techniques comprises four papers and two correspondences. Four of these articles are concerned with communication over burst-noise channels, one reports on sequential decoding over an essentially additive Gaussian noise channel, and one examines the source encoding of analog waveforms for transmission over a noisy binary channel. Coding can provide significant if not dramatic improvements in communication over certain channels in certain instances. Several of these instances are detailed in the papers in this issue. One is struck in reading these papers, however, that, with but one exception (diffuse coding), most of the applications are still experimental. The widespread use of coding is not yet here.