The general theory of convolutional codes
Robert J. McEliece, Richard P. Stanley · The Telecommunications and Data Acquisition Report · 1993
This article presents a self-contained introduction to the algebraic theory of convolutional codes. This introduction is partly a tutorial, but at the same time contains a number of new results which will prove useful for designers of advanced telecommunication systems. Among the new concepts introduced here are the Hilbert series for a convolutional code and the class of compact codes.