Introduction to Wireless Digital Communication: A Signal Processing Perspective

Chapter 2. An Overview of Digital Communication

2.1 Introduction to Digital Communication

Communication is the process of conveying information from a transmitter to a receiver, through a channel. The transmitter generates a signal containing the information to be sent. Upon transmission, the signal propagates to the receiver, incurring various types of distortion captured together in what is called the channel. Finally, the receiver observes the distorted signal and attempts to recover the transmitted information. The more side information the receiver has about the transmitted signal or the nature of the distortion introduced by the channel, the better the job it can do at recovering the unknown information.

There are two important categories ...