
You can open or close the spigot to increase or decrease the desired flow. The spigot acts as the final control mechanism. This is usually even smaller in diameter, so flow is restricted even more. It only allows a certain amount to flow through it. This is actually a regulated flow, with a number of control mechanisms.įirst, there is the diameter of the water pipe. Now let’s get back to our garden hose of telecommunications. Even more importantly, they don’t come and hook their hoses up to your outside spigot, do they? No, they use the large pipes connected to the local fire hydrant. You need a large diameter hose such as that used by your local fire department. Your little garden hose won’t be of much help in this instance. If we have a regular garden hose, we should be able to get enough volume of water through it to put the fire out. The larger the pipe, the more information that can be passed through it.Īssume that there is a small campfire. Bandwidth is the pipe or hose of the communications industry. Now apply the same concept to telecommunications. However, did more volume of water actually flow through the pipe? It depends on the size. By constricting a pipe, one can cause water to be expelled very rapidly. The bigger the pipe or hose, the larger the volume of water that you can put through it.

That is as a unit of measurement that represents the rate at which data or bits of information may be transmitted through a system. We will use the term as it is most commonly referred to in reference to the internet. For our discussion, we will be speaking of bandwidth in terms of business communication solutions.Įven here the term can be misleading. In optics, it is the width of an individual spectral line or the entire spectral range.

When it comes to radio, bandwidth often refers to wavelength. Twisted pair, coaxial cable, fibre optics etc.Bandwidth can refer to many things depending on the application being discussed. The bandwidth of the medium should always be greater than the bandwidth of the signal to be transmitted else loss of information takes place.ĭifferent types of channels have different bandwidth. number of bits per second that the channel can carry. In terms of digital signal, bandwidth of the channel is the maximum bit rate supported by the channel. In terms of analog signal, bandwidth of the channel is the range of frequencies that the channel can carry. BANDWIDTH OF A CHANNELĪ channel is the medium through which the input signal passes. So, effective speech bandwidth is 3400 Hz – 300 Hz = 3100 Hz. For efficient transmission and reception of speech signal, 300 – 3400 Hz is sufficient. Note that transmission of all frequencies (20-20kHz) is costly. But the voice frequencies from 300 Hz – 3400 Hz are only transmitted in communications. The range of human voice (speech) is 20 Hz – 20 kHz. Also note that bandwidth of signal is different from bandwidth of the channel. Analog signal bandwidth is measured in terms of its frequency (Hz) but digital signal bandwidth is measured in terms of bit rate (bits per second, bps). In analog technology, the bandwidth is the difference between the lowest and highest frequencies that can pass through the channel. Voice signal, music signal, etc Type of the signalīandwidth of analog and digital signals is calculated in separate ways. Ideally channel should provide more bandwidth and signal must occupy less bandwidth.ĭifferent types of signals have different bandwidth. Note that greater the bandwidth of a channel, higher the data rate. Frequency range of the signal is known as bandwidth.It is one way of describing the maximum amount of information that the channel can carry.It may also be defined as the frequency range over which a signal is transmitted.Bandwidth can be defined as the portion of the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum occupied by the signal.It is defined as the range of frequencies that the signal occupies.

Bandwidth is the difference between upper and lower frequency limits of the signal.
