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AN INTRODUCTION TO MULTIMEDIA COMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKING
1.1 Fundamentals of Communications
Communication systems are used to enable the exchange of data between two or more entities (humans or machines). As can be seen from Figure 1.1, data consists of a representation of an information source, whose transformation is performed by a source encoder. An example of a source encoder is a thermometer, which converts temperatures (information source) into voltages (data). A telephone can also be viewed as a source encoder, which converts the analog voice (information source) into a voltage (data) before being transmitted along the telephone network (transmission medium). In case the information source is analog and the transmission medium is ...
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