COMMUNICATION (Physical)
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(1) |
| ID | ◀ 513 ▶ |
| Object type | Discipline oriented |
A physical process in which a material transmitter emits in a well defined code some signals which can be decoded by an adequate receiver.
Voices or sounds, musical or others are transformed into electro-magnetic waves and reconverted to sounds by a telephone or an audio-set.
Thereafter the sounds are received by our hearing system and converted from sound waves to sensations.
Similar processes allow for the transmission of visual signals, for example through a television chain.
These processes are completely independent of whatever meaning the signals may be intended to convey. Here, coding is a biunivocal physical transformation whose efficiency depends on avoiding perturbing noises or compensate them by adquate repetitions (= redundancy).
Any type of physical communication needs the following elements: an emissor or sender, an encoder, a channel, a receiver and a decoder, and… of course, a source of energy. Generally the communication process must also be monitored in order to ensure its correctness.