  One of the major achievements of the recently emerged quantum information
theory is the introduction and thorough investigation of the notion of quantum
channel which is a basic building block of any data-transmitting or
data-processing system. This development resulted in an elaborated structural
theory and was accompanied by the discovery of a whole spectrum of entropic
quantities, notably the channel capacities, characterizing
information-processing performance of the channels. This paper gives a survey
of the main properties of quantum channels and of their entropic
characterization, with a variety of examples for finite dimensional quantum
systems. We also touch upon the "continuous-variables" case, which provides an
arena for quantum Gaussian systems. Most of the practical realizations of
quantum information processing were implemented in such systems, in particular
based on principles of quantum optics. Several important entropic quantities
are introduced and used to describe the basic channel capacity formulas. The
remarkable role of the specific quantum correlations - entanglement - as a
novel communication resource, is stressed.
