1. Shannon's channel coding theorem states that for any channel with a capacity C and transmission rate Rc < C, it is possible to encode messages into codewords such that the probability of error can be made arbitrarily small as the code length increases.
2. Channel coding involves encoding a message into a codeword for transmission over a noisy channel in order to allow reliable communication up to the channel's capacity.
3. The theorem establishes that for any rate lower than the channel capacity, there exists an encoding and decoding scheme that can achieve arbitrarily reliable communication by making the codewords long enough.