# Waves, telecommunication and signal processing

I've been studying by myself about waves while I can't get these classes in college. The goal is understanding more of what's going on in the telecommunications field so I can point an antenna at NOAA in the future. I'd appreciate some reccomendations of books for more formal knowledge on that from more advanced students or idk, maybe someone find this useful. Here's some basics.

Telecommunications are the way data is transmitted across the globe, and radio waves are what makes wireless transmission possible. From plain old radios to wifi, the spectrum between 33MH and 300 GH is used and protocols standardized for each band, everything has it's band and all. Analog radio signals consists of a wave (carrier wave) being transmitted with modifications (or modulations) that represents data. There are three main kinds of modulation:

Amplitude modulation: The wave's amplitude changes while the frequency remains the same. It can observed in softwares with frequency domain plots as a narrow peak that changes height over time in the graph. For analog signals it's AM and for digital it's ASK (shift-keying) Frequency modulation: The frequency of the wave changes over time. The signal usually spans a wider frame and this type supports carrying several different audio channels to demodulate at the same time (mono, stereo) Phase modulation: it's weird. Who uses that?

broadcasting: most phone and tv signals are broadcast by antenna to a satellite and then to the receiver(s). There is a worldwide spanning web of satellites called iridium that covers all of the planet. Some special satellites which are properties of countries are used, and others transmit data from space (Like NOAA's meteorological images).

Devices: devices for transmission and receiving are antenna. band-pass filter, modulators, demodulators (modem). I still dont know much about this part. There are directional antennas, omnidirectional antennas, all sorts. This is where I need more info, the hardware, software and mathematics of RF signal processing.

I might post more later when I learn.

Note by Ingrid Spangler
6 months, 3 weeks ago

MarkdownAppears as
*italics* or _italics_ italics
**bold** or __bold__ bold

- bulleted
- list

• bulleted
• list

1. numbered
2. list

1. numbered
2. list
Note: you must add a full line of space before and after lists for them to show up correctly
paragraph 1

paragraph 2

paragraph 1

paragraph 2

> This is a quote
This is a quote
# I indented these lines
# 4 spaces, and now they show
# up as a code block.

print "hello world"
# I indented these lines
# 4 spaces, and now they show
# up as a code block.

print "hello world"
MathAppears as
Remember to wrap math in $$...$$ or $...$ to ensure proper formatting.
2 \times 3 $$2 \times 3$$
2^{34} $$2^{34}$$
a_{i-1} $$a_{i-1}$$
\frac{2}{3} $$\frac{2}{3}$$
\sqrt{2} $$\sqrt{2}$$
\sum_{i=1}^3 $$\sum_{i=1}^3$$
\sin \theta $$\sin \theta$$
\boxed{123} $$\boxed{123}$$