In telecommunication, concerning the modulation of a carrier, a significant condition is one of the signal's parameters chosen to represent information.
A significant condition could be an electrical current (voltage, or power level), an optical power level, a phase value, or a particular frequency or wavelength. The duration of a significant condition is the time interval between successive significant instants. A change from one significant condition to another is called a signal transition. Information can be transmitted either during the given time interval, or encoded as the presence or absence of a change in the received signal.
Significant conditions are recognized by an appropriate device called a receiver, demodulator, or decoder. The decoder translates the actual signal received into its intended logical value such as a binary digit (0 or 1), an alphabetic character, a mark, or a space. Each significant instant is determined when the appropriate device assumes a condition or state usable for performing a specific function, such as recording, processing, or gating.
Read more about this topic: Symbol Rate
Famous quotes containing the words significant and/or condition:
“Priests and physicians should never look one another in the face. They have no common ground, nor is there any to mediate between them. When the one comes, the other goes. They could not come together without laughter, or a significant silence, for the one’s profession is a satire on the other’s, and either’s success would be the other’s failure.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Now, since our condition accommodates things to itself, and transforms them according to itself, we no longer know things in their reality; for nothing comes to us that is not altered and falsified by our Senses. When the compass, the square, and the rule are untrue, all the calculations drawn from them, all the buildings erected by their measure, are of necessity also defective and out of plumb. The uncertainty of our senses renders uncertain everything that they produce.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)