Telecommunications Demystified

Chapter 1

Introducing Telecommunications

I can still recall sitting in my first class on telecommunications as an undergrad—the teacher going off into a world of technical detail and I in my chair wondering, “What is this stuff called communications and telecommunications?” So, first, some simple definitions and examples—the big picture.

1.1 Communication Systems

1.1.1 Definition

A communication system is, simply, any system in which information is transmitted from one physical location—let’s call it A—to a second physical location, which we’ll call B. I’ve shown this in Figure 1.1. A simple example of a communication system is one person talking to another person at lunch. Another simple example is one person talking to a second person over ...