  This paper reviews some results on the identifiability of classes of
operators whose Kohn-Nirenberg symbols are band-limited (called band-limited
operators), which we refer to as sampling of operators. We trace the motivation
and history of the subject back to the original work of the third-named author
in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and to the innovations in spread-spectrum
communications that preceded that work. We give a brief overview of the NOMAC
(Noise Modulation and Correlation) and Rake receivers, which were early
implementations of spread-spectrum multi-path wireless communication systems.
We examine in detail the original proof of the third-named author
characterizing identifiability of channels in terms of the maximum time and
Doppler spread of the channel, and do the same for the subsequent
generalization of that work by Bello.
  The mathematical limitations inherent in the proofs of Bello and the third
author are removed by using mathematical tools unavailable at the time. We
survey more recent advances in sampling of operators and discuss the
implications of the use of periodically-weighted delta-trains as identifiers
for operator classes that satisfy Bello's criterion for identifiability,
leading to new insights into the theory of finite-dimensional Gabor systems. We
present novel results on operator sampling in higher dimensions, and review
implications and generalizations of the results to stochastic operators, MIMO
systems, and operators with unknown spreading domains.
