Telecommunication

Telecommunication refers to communication over long distances. In practice, something of the message may be lost in the process. 'Telecommunication' covers all forms of distance and/or conversion of the original communications, including radio, telegraphy, television, telephony, data communication and computer networking.

Examples of human (tele)communications

In a simplistic example, consider a normal conversation between two people. The message is the sentence that the speaker decides to communicate to the listener. The transmitter is the language areas in the brain, the motor cortex, the vocal cords, the larynx, and the mouth that produce those sounds called speech. The signal is the sound waves (pressure fluctuations in air particles) that can be identified as speech. The channel is the air carrying those sound waves, and all the acoustic properties of the surrounding space: echoes, ambient noise, reverberation. Between the speaker and the listener, there might be other devices that do or do not introduce their own distortions of the original vocal signal (for example a telephone, a HAM radio, an IP phone, etc.) The receiver is the listener's ear and auditory system, the auditory nerve, and the language areas in the listener's brain that will "decode" the signal into meaningful information and filter out background noise.

Related Topics:
Brain - Motor cortex - Vocal cord - Larynx - Mouth - Sound - Speech - Sound wave - Echo - Reverberation - HAM radio - IP phone - Auditory nerve

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All channels have noise. Another important aspect of the channel is called the bandwidth. A low bandwidth channel, such as a telephone, cannot carry all of the audio information that is transmitted in normal conversation, causing distortion and irregularities in the speaker's voice, as compared to normal, in-person speech.

Related Topics:
Bandwidth - Telephone

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