6: Communications
- Page ID
- 50188
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We have been considering a model of an information handling system in which symbols from an input are encoded into bits, which are then sent across a “channel” to a receiver and get decoded back into symbols, as shown in Figure 6.1.
In this chapter we focus on how fast the information that identifies the symbols can be transferred to the output. The symbols themselves, of course, are not transmitted, but only the information necessary to identify them. This is what is necessary for the stream of symbols to be recreated at the output.
We will model both the source and the channel in a little more detail, and then give three theorems relating to the source characteristics and the channel capacity.