Channel capacity of a finite-state linear automation (Corresp.)

A finite-state deterministic linear automaton is viewed as a communication channel from a source to a receiver, accepting source symbols as inputs and generating outputs for a receiver. The automaton is assumed to be composed of two subautomata, one representing the next-state function and one the output function. With the use of Shannon's theorem for capacities of discrete channels, it is demonstrated that the channel capacities of the linear automaton and its subautomata can be readily determined by an analytical procedure rather than by applying an iterative algorithm as required for general finite-state automata.