ABSTRACT
One rapidly expanding technology is that of telecommunications and networking. The systems were designed almost exclusively to move voice communication or messages via analog facilities. Furthermore, the telecommunications expert was often unfamiliar with the nuances of transmitting digital data. Telecommunications is frequently defined as "the art and science of communicating at a distance, especially by means of electromagnetic impulses, as in radio, radar, television, telegraphy, telephony and extra". Fundamental to the understanding of telecommunications is the notion of the signal. It is the signal that contains the information that is moved between two points within the telecommunications system. A signal can further be described in terms of three fundamental attributes, frequency, amplitude, and phase. Frequency refers to the number of repetitions or appearances of the signal in a given period of time. The amplitude of the signal represents the instantaneous value of the signal during a cycle. The third descriptor of a signal is called a phase.
