Random coding techniques for nonrandom codes

This work provides techniques to apply the channel coding theorem and the resulting error exponent, which was originally derived for totally random block-code ensembles, to ensembles of codes with less restrictive randomness demands. As an example, the random coding technique can even be applied for an ensemble that contains a single code. For a specific linear code, we get an upper bound for the error probability, which equals Gallager's (1968) random coding bound, up to a factor determined by the maximum ratio between the weight distribution of the code, and the expected random weight distribution.