Radio 102: Noise in an information carrying system

Each letter in the word is represented by differentmost of the transmission channels in spite of the fact
signal amplitude using thirty two scale order. If we dothat the noise present in most channels is never
so information flow speed gets greatly increased asperfectly random. It is found that the limiting channel
per Hartley law. Since now each letter is representedspeed for a typical telephone channel is about thirty
by one symbol instead of five. But in such a casethree kilo bits per second. How ever speeds used in
noise will cause numerous error making the systempractice over such channels do not normally exceed
useless extremely large transmitting power is used.eleven kilo bits per second. Doubling the speed the
This fact may be established on comparing the powerbandwidth of a noise limited channel will double its
requirements for the binary coding system and anycapacity would amount to misinterpretation. Actually
N-level system under the same noise conditions. For athe capacity gets increased by only eighty percent
given transmission and coding system there results aredepending upon signal to noise ratio. Thus we see that
threshold noise levels below which practically no errorsthere exists possibility of trading bandwidth for signal to
occur due to noise. Using binary code noise has tonoise ratio. It may also be noted that a low channel
compete with the full power of the transmitter tocapacity does not mean that the desired amount of
cause any serious error. It is found that in a practicalinformation can not be seen over a given channel. It
channel, signal to noise ratio of thirty decibel ensuressimply means sending this amount of information takes
almost error free reception. This thirty decibel ratiolonger time. Lastly it may be seen that the
implies that noise power be one by thousand of signalShannon-Hartley theorem represents a fundamental
power or root mean square noise voltage be one bylimitation. Any attempt to exceed the Shannon limit
thirty one of root mean square signal voltage.would result in unacceptable error rate. In good quality
The transmitted power is required to rise tremendouslytransmission system maximum acceptable error ratio
if a desired high signal to noise power ratio is to beis one in 1000000. All the messages sent though the
maintained on increasing signaling speed that is onnoise limited channel are unpredictable or random.
increasing the number of coding levels.Tymon Hytem has worked in the electronics feild for
Shannon-Hartley theorem gives the maximum signalingthe past 15 years. He enjoys helping people decide on
speed in a channel in which the noise is purely random.electronic gadgets from telephones to XM Radio and
This theorem may be used as a very goodchoosing the perfect XM Satellite Radio system for
approximation for the ultimate channel capacity oftheir needs.