Telecommunications

Telecommunication is the transmission of signals over a distance for the purpose of communication. In modern times, this process typically involves the sending of electromagnetic waves by electronic transmitters, but in earlier times telecommunication may have involved the use of smoke signals, drums or semaphore. Today, telecommunication is widespread and devices that assist the process, such as the television, radio and telephone, are common in many parts of the world. There are also many networks that connect these devices, including computer networks, public telephone networks, radio networks and television networks. Computer communication across the Internet is one of many examples of telecommunication.

Telecommunication systems are generally designed by telecommunication engineers. Early inventors in the field include Alexander Graham Bell, Guglielmo Marconi and John Logie Baird. Telecommunication is an important part of the world economy with the telecommunication industry's revenue being placed at just under 3 percent of the gross world product.

Basic elements

Each telecommunication system consists of three basic elements:

    * a transmitter that takes information and converts it to a signal;
    * a transmission medium over which the signal is transmitted;
    * a receiver that receives the signal and converts it back into usable information.

For example, consider a radio broadcast: In this case the broadcast tower is the transmitter, the radio is the receiver and the transmission medium is free space. Often telecommunication systems are two-way and a single device acts as both a transmitter and receiver, or transceiver. For example, a mobile phone is a transceiver.[3]

Telecommunication over a phone line is called point-to-point communication because it is between one transmitter and one receiver. Telecommunication through radio broadcasts is called broadcast communication because it is between one powerful transmitter and numerous receivers.[3]

 Analogue or digital

Signals can either be analogue or digital. In an analogue signal, the signal is varied continuously with respect to the information. In a digital signal, the information is encoded as a set of discrete values (e.g. 1's and 0's). During transmission, the information contained in analogue signals will be degraded by noise. Conversely, unless the noise exceeds a certain threshold, the information contained in digital signals will remain intact. This represents a key advantage of digital signals over analogue signals.[4]

Networks

A collection of transmitters, receivers or transceivers that communicate with each other is known as a network. Digital networks may consist of one or more routers that route data to the correct user. An analogue network may consist of one or more switches that establish a connection between two or more users. For both types of network, repeaters may be necessary to amplify or recreate the signal when it is being transmitted over long distances. This is to combat attenuation that can render the signal indistinguishable from noise.[5]

Channels

A channel is a division in a transmission medium so that it can be used to send multiple streams of information. For example, a radio station may broadcast at 96 MHz while another radio station may broadcast at 94.5 MHz. In this case, the medium has been divided by frequency and each channel received a separate frequency to broadcast on. Alternatively, one could allocate each channel a recurring segment of time over which to broadcast — this is known as time-division multiplexing and is sometimes used in digital communication.[5]

Modulation

The shaping of a signal to convey information is known as modulation. Modulation can be used to represent a digital message as an analogue waveform. This is known as keying and several keying techniques exist (these include phase-shift keying, frequency-shift keying and amplitude-shift keying). Bluetooth, for example, uses phase-shift keying to exchange information between devices.

Modulation can also be used to transmit the information of analogue signals at higher frequencies. This is helpful because low-frequency analogue signals cannot be effectively transmitted over free space. Hence the information from a low-frequency analogue signal must be superimposed on a higher-frequency signal (known as a carrier wave) before transmission. There are several different modulation schemes available to achieve this (two of the most basic being amplitude modulation and frequency modulation). An example of this process in action is a DJ's voice being superimposed on a 96 MHz carrier wave using frequency modulation (the voice would then be received on a radio as the channel “96 FM”).