Fundamentals of Telecommunications: Week 1 Introduction to Telecommunications

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Fundamentals of Telecommunications Week
1Introduction to Telecommunications

• Elizabeth Lane Lawley, Instructor

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Course preliminaries

• Introductions
• Syllabus
• Schedule
• Policies
• Online support
• FirstClass conference
• Course web site

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What is telecommunications?

• Communication by electrical means, usually (but
  not necessarily) over a distance
• Includes transmission of various types of
  messages, including text, sounds, and/or images

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Key terms and concepts

• Data
• Information
• Communication

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What is data?

• Elements that can be represented by a finite set
  of symbols, such as digits or alphabets
• Can take the form of text, sound, images, and/or
  video
• Easily translated and transmitted via electrical
  signals

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Analog and digital

• Analog data represented as a continuous signal,
  such as an oscillation of current to represent
  sound
• Digital data represented as discrete entities,
  such as pulses of current to represent binary bits

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What is information?

• Answer may not be as easy as we think
• Three primary schools of thought
• Information as tangible, measurable thing
  (Buckland)
• Information as subjective construct or process
  (Schement et al)
• Information as difference (Bateson)
• All information is made up of data not all data
  is processed into information

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Traditional communication model

• Traditional data communication model
• From Shannon Weavers work
• Concerned with transmission of data
• Assumptions
• Communication is unidirectional
• Message is static

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New models for communication

• Focused on human needs
• Concerned with transmission/creation of
  information
• Acknowledges imperfect contexts, variations in
  construction of meaning

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Data communications

• The movement of coded information from one place
  to another by electricical means
• Generally considered a subset of
  telecommunications
• Digital rather than analog
• Increasingly synonymous with telecommunications

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Advantages of telecommunications

• Interface of data processing and communication
• Extension of time and space barriers to
  communication