Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-communication-theory-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2007/4/a/solution
Past exam of the communication Theory course of the University of Oxford 2007 4 a Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-31
With equally likely codewords, the prior factor in the ideal-observer criterion is constant, so it agrees with maximum likelihood. On the binary symmetric channel,For this is strictly decreasing in Hamming distance, so the likelihood maximizers are precisely the nearest codewords. With the same tie convention all three decoders therefore agree. At every possible received word equals its transmitted codeword, and the rules agree on all positive-probability outputs; outputs having zero probability need no posterior assignment.
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