Telecommunication Fundamental Concepts

The evolution from analog to digital must be comprehended and specially the implications of the digital world in terms of adaptation of the telecommunication systems. This chapter covers the propagation characteristics of specific telecommunication technologies, that is, optical fiber communications and radiocommunications. The very foundations of telecommunications are the transmission of signals from one point to another. A signal is a mathematical representation of the evolution of a physical quantity concerning some parameters. The main advantage of the Fourier Transform is the opportunity of looking at a signal from the frequency dimension. In telecommunications and computer networks, multiplexing is a method by which multiple analog or digital signals are combined into one signal over a shared medium. Channel Coding is a technique used in digital communications that is focused on the reduction of errors in the receiver side of the systems. Optical communications are based on the transmission of light pulses instead of electrical signals.