This unique textbook – made up of classroom slides and relevant context from the authors’ course at NYU – provides a clear, step-by-step journey from the fundamentals of signal analysis to the sophisticated modulation and detection strategies that power today’s communication systems. Beginning with intuitive treatments of Fourier Series, Fourier Transforms, and Nyquist’s Sampling Theorem, the book builds the mathematical intuition students need to move confidently into analog and digital modulation techniques—covering AM (DSB, SSB, VSB), FM, PM, and their behavior in noisy environments. The narrative then turns to modern digital topics such as sampling, quantization, coding, and probabilistic detection for binary and multi-signaling schemes, showing how error probabilities can be driven arbitrarily low with thoughtful waveform design. Rich in worked examples and practical insights, the text equips undergraduates with both the theoretical grounding and hands on perspective required to understand, analyze, and design real world communication links. The book is designed for a semester undergraduate course in Fundamentals of Communication Theory, and the slides are intended to be used and are available digitally.

Unnikrishna Pillai received his Ph.D. degree in systems engineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 1985 and MTech in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India in 1982. He joined Brooklyn Polytechnic, New York, in 1985 as an assistant professor in electrical engineering, and since 1995 he has been a professor of electrical and computer engineering (currently New York University). He is the author of several widely used textbooks including Probability, Random Variables and Stochastic Processes (A. Papoulis and S. U. Pillai) (2002), has over 250 online video lectures, and has published extensively. He is the 4-th most cited Google scholar under ‘Radar.’ His research interests include synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging, waveform design, power control for wireless mobiles, electronic signal identification, rational and stable approximation of norational systems, array signal processing, portfolio optimization, and applications of non-linear differential equations for modeling physical systems with time-varying characteristics. He is a life Fellow of IEEE.