 Solution

For a discrete memoryless channel with transition probabilities $M(y\mid x)$, the conditional probability of a length-$n$ output given a length-$n$ input factors asThe same transition probabilities apply at each use. Its channel capacity isThe unit is bits per channel use. For finite alphabets the maximum exists by continuity on the probability simplex; with more general alphabets one uses a supremum when appropriate.

An $(m,n)$ channel code consists of an encoder $c:{\mathcal{V}}_m\to {\mathcal{X}}^n$ and a decoder $d:{\mathcal{Y}}^n\to {\mathcal{V}}_m$. It represents each of $m$ messages by $n$ input symbols and recovers a message from the $n$ observed output symbols. Its code rate is $R=({\log }_{2}m)/n$ bits per use. For each message $w$, its conditional error probability is $\mathbb{P}(d(Y^n)\ne w\mid W=w)$; an average error also specifies the message probability distribution, while the maximum error takes the largest conditional error.