From the course: Computer Science Principles: Digital Information

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Digital communication

Digital communication

From the course: Computer Science Principles: Digital Information

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Digital communication

- Transmitting digital information in the form of states of on or off or ones and zeros can be done in a lot of different ways. There are three that you'll encounter whenever you connect to the internet or to any type of network, radio, electrical, and optical. Let's start with radio. Most homes and offices use Wi-Fi to connect to networks and to the internet. Wi-Fi networks are based on radio waves that transmit binary states based on alternating the radio waves that send information. By encoding information into binary data, it is then translated into these varying radio waves and can be transmitted, received, and converted back to binary data, and decoded into its original format. Wi-Fi and radio communications are great for short distances. But as you know, if you take your laptop or device far away from a hotspot, your signal gets weaker and weaker until, at some point, it isn't strong enough to reliably send information. Radio can also be noisy. When you have one hotspot…

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