Does anyone understand Signal Theory

thewizard

Hi all

I'm currenly trying to do coursework for my BTEC National Diploma in ICT. I have to describe the basics of Signal Theory. Now I have been given a load of help files from my teacher, but it appears he hasn't read them that well because many of them contain information about Signalling theory which is used in the brain.

The other documentation contains massive amounts of graphs and alegebra with accompanying text to explain what it means, but its like foreign language.

Does anyone understand what Signal Theory used in IT is, and can explain in simple terms so I have somewhere to build on before I read the complex things.

Thanks in advance

penrhyn

Are you talking about the likes of SDH, DTMF pulse dialling, packet routing and such like?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_%28telecommunications%29

What about a nice early system like the one that warned ship owners that their boat load a of goods was approaching the Mersey.




The operator had to signal the remote station and get a reply before the message could be sent.

thewizard

penrhyn wrote: »

Are you talking about the likes of SDH, DTMF pulse dialling, packet routing and such like?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_%28telecommunications%29

What about a nice early system like the one that warned ship owners that their boat load a of goods was approaching the Mersey.




The operator had to signal the remote station and get a reply before the message could be sent.

If I'm completely honest, I'm not to sure, but that looks right.

And thanks for the link I'll take a look :beer:

basmic

Warning - possible information overload: http://www.cs.nccu.edu.tw/~lien/NIIslide/BasicCom/hardcopy.htm

thewizard

basmic wrote: »

Warning - possible information overload: http://www.cs.nccu.edu.tw/~lien/NIIslide/BasicCom/hardcopy.htm

This looks promising...Thanks

Joe_Bloggs

There may links to the topics you have to cover on the Edexcel web page.
If you can find your course on this site then you can find out what you are supposed to study and what you are supposed to learn.

Eg. From Unit 8 Communication Technologies ( found here )

Signal theory: digital signalling methods; representing data electronically (bits, bytes, packet structures); synchronous and asynchronous transmission; error correction and detection; effect of bandwidth limitation and noise; channel types eg telephone, high frequency (HF) radio, microwave, satellite; other issues eg bandwidth, data compression

J_B.

thewizard

Joe_Bloggs wrote: »

There may links to the topics you have to cover on the Edexcel web page.
If you can find your course on this site then you can find out what you are supposed to study and what you are supposed to learn.

Eg. From Unit 8 Communication Technologies ( found here )
J_B.

Thanks for the help, but maybe I'm being stupid, but I cant find where your quote is from on that link you gave me.

Joe_Bloggs

I did not want to be accused of 'spoon feeding'. If you scroll down the page to the the documents section there is a + specification link that opens up to reveal a 700 page PDF document. This is where I found the reference I quoted. There are other things to read also on this page. I don't know if any of them are relevant.
J_B.

thewizard

thanks JB...I'll take a look.

John_Gray

You won't go far wrong by reading up about Claude Shannon, the main pioneer of information theory.

superscaper

John_Gray wrote: »

You won't go far wrong by reading up about Claude Shannon, the main pioneer of information theory.

And presumably Nyquist as well.