discrete communication

Discrete signals can represent only a finite number of different, recognizable states. For example, the letters of the English alphabet are commonly thought of as discrete signals. Continuous signals, also known as analog signals, are commonly used to transmit quantities that can vary over an…

For noiseless communications, the decoder at the receiving end receives exactly the characters sent by the encoder. However, these transmitted characters are typically not in the original message’s alphabet. For example, in Morse Code appropriately spaced short and long electrical pulses, light flashes, or sounds are…

…work in the area of discrete, noisy communication pointed out the possibility of constructing error-correcting codes. Error-correcting codes add extra bits to help correct errors and thus operate in the opposite direction from compression. Error-detecting codes, on the other hand, indicate that an error has occurred but do not automatically…

In the discussion above, it is assumed unrealistically that all messages are transmitted without error. In the real world, however, transmission errors are unavoidable—especially given the presence in any communication channel of noise, which is the sum…

After all, the nervous system is, above all else, a channel for the transmission of information, and the brain is, among other things, an information processing and messaging centre. Because nerve signals generally consist of pulses of electrical energy, the nervous system appears to be an example of…