A Class of Binary Signaling Alphabets

Abstract

A class of binary signaling alphabets called “group alphabets” is described. The alphabets are generalizations of Hamming's error correcting codes and possess the following special features: (1) all letters are treated alike in transmission; (2) the encoding is simple to instrument; (3) maximum likelihood detection is relatively simple to instrument; and (4) in certain practical cases there exist no better alphabets. A compilation is given of group alphabets of length equal to or less than 10 binary digits.