Definitions for communications hardware

• Simplex: One-way. A device is a receiver or a transmitter

  • Example: FM radio

• Duplex: Bidirectional. A device is a transceiver

  • Example: Cell phone
  • 2 types of duplex communications
    • Full Duplex: Transceivers can transmit and receive at the same time
    • Half Duplex: Transceivers can’t transmit and receive at the same time

• Baud rate: Symbols per second

  • = bits/second only for binary symbols

• NRZ: Nonreturn-to-zero

  • Symbols stay high or low for the entire bit interval
    • Difficult to recover clock from the data

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