Signal detection plays a critical role in realizing reliable transmission through communication systems. In this dissertation, by applying information theoretic approach, efficient detection schemes and algorithms are designed for three particular communication systems. First, a computation efficient coding and detection algorithm is developed to decode two dimensional inter-symbol interference (ISI) channels. The detection algorithm significantly reduces the computation complexity and makes the proposed equalization algorithm applicable. A new metric, the post-detection mutual information (PMI), is established to quantify the ultimate information rate between the discrete inputs and the hard detected output. This is the first time that the information rate loss caused by the hard mapping of the detectors is considered. Since the hard mapping step in the detector is irreversible, we expect that the PMI is reduced compared to the MI without hard mapping. The conclusion is confirmed by both the simulation and the theoretic results. Random complex field code is designed to achieve the secrecy capacity of wiretap channel with noiseless main channel and binary erasure eavesdroppers' channel. More importantly, in addition to approaching the secrecy capacity, RCFC is the first code design which provides a platform to tradeoff secrecy performance with the erasure rate of the eavesdropper's channel and the secrecy rate.