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Computer science
Course: Computer science > Unit 3
Lesson 2: Modern information theory- Symbol rate
- Introduction to channel capacity
- Message space exploration
- Measuring information
- Origin of Markov chains
- Markov chain exploration
- A mathematical theory of communication
- Markov text exploration
- Information entropy
- Compression codes
- Error correction
- The search for extraterrestrial intelligence
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Symbol rate
Introduction to Symbol Rate (Baud). Created by Brit Cruise.
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- Is the black rectangle on the Baudôt keyboard another key that can be used somehow? 1:24(49 votes)
- Good question! And no, it's just a divider.(54 votes)
- What is with the dolphin at? 0:04(5 votes)
- uses a dolphin because it emits high-frequency noises often, making the waves and symbol rate easy to measure 0:05(2 votes)
- I was wondering... At aroundI hear the same voice as the person who was teaching Morse Code from earlier videos. Is this the same person? 2:12(6 votes)
- Yeah, this is Brit Cruise. He does computer science stuff.(5 votes)
- Is a pulse the same as a signal?(6 votes)
- Why do signals "run together at the receiving end of a com-line"? I didnt understand the explanation given at. 3:19(2 votes)
- This is the result of noise like shown in the other video.
Also, you can think about the string plucking. You can pluck out a message rather quickly, but the vibrations of the string on the other end bounce back and forth causing the "bleed" or overlap(5 votes)
- Athow does the character light two matches at once? does anyone know? 4:19(2 votes)
- He puts the match between the two. Also, what does this have to do with the video?(3 votes)
- And another question: if the symbol rate is how many signals you can squeeze in a given amount of time, what's capacity?(2 votes)
- The channel capacity of a given channnel is the highest symbol rate possible through that channel while still sending an understandable message. If you send a message at a higher rate than the channel capacity, the message will likely not make sense to the recipient.
I hope this clarifies channel capacity!(3 votes)
- Atit seems that the letters of the teletype-writer is represented by 7 pulses instead of the supposed 5, am I misunderstanding the image? 1:50(2 votes)
- Note that the last pulse is actually twice as long as the others. so each character is 8 pulses long, not 7 or even 5. Only 5 of the pulses (bits) make up the character. There are also 3 bits that are used for character synchronization. The first bit, the start bit (also called space bit) indicates the start of a 5 bit code is starting. At the tail (the left hand side) is two end bits (also called mark bits), for a total of 8. The character synchronization is useful in event of a dropped bit, because the way teletypes, especially radio teletypes worked, if a portion of a character was dropped (say, due to noise in the transmission), it would not affect the following characters. you might end up with an incorrect character, but the system has a chance to detect the mark-space sequence and re-synchronize.(2 votes)
- Do we still use the keyboard code today?(2 votes)
- I don't think so, I'm pretty sure it is now almost (or completely) obsolete...at least the device itself is.(1 vote)
- I'm a bit confused... shouldn't the number of symbols available be only 31, or (2^5)-1? If not, how would you differentiate between a space and the no-key symbol? On the card at, it doesn't show any no-key symbol... please help me. And congrats to Brit on the challenges... he gives ample opportunity for you to solve it, but it's not too easy. Nice balance. 1:30(2 votes)
Video transcript
Voiceover: How is that we
should measure information in a way that applies to
any communication system you can think of, human, animal or alien.
(dolphin squeaks) Well, let's return to
the late 19th century, where at the time we were
focused as we are today on speed. (single handed piano music) And one goal to improve
speed was to design a machine which allowed operators to input letters, which we can think of as
primary symbols and have the machine automate
(Morse Code signals) the lower-level signaling events, such as pulses of electricity, we can call secondary symbols. And machines can be driven
by some clock source allowing it to generate a
precise and rapid pulse stream, which presumably would run much
faster than any human hand. And one great example of this was the Baudot Multiplex System. And the design was put
into service in 1874. And it built off the same conceptual ideas we've seen in the shutter telegraph. It consisted of 5 keys which could be played in any combination. Think of it as a chord.
(single hand piano music) Each combination would
represent a unique message with five notes each either
on or off, you can play two to the power of five
or 32 different chords. The code assigned the 32
different chords to each letter of the alphabet with
the leftovers used for carriage returns, new line and spaces. So the operator would literally
play letters and their machine would automatically output a pulse stream representing the letters. Voiceover: Like this, for letter "T." Voiceover: Or like this for letter "R". Voiceover: Or like this for letter B. So we have an output signal
containing various combinations of DC Impulses, a signal
that accurately represents the message typed on the teletypewriter. (telegram output dinging) The iambic counter, the
mechanical nerves of the system, change words to holes on
tape, and the holes on tape to electrical impulses
speeding over the wires. (soft thoughtful music) Voiceover: Notice at the
lowest level, this system is exchanging either the presence
or absence of electrical current in a sequence
divided using a clock. So, how fast can our internal clocks run? The limiting speed was not the clock. Then and today, the
speed of transmission was physically limited by the minimum spaces between these impulses or the pulse rate. And this problem plagued
engineers who were testing underground submarine cables using the existing Morse Code system. And it's similar to an
echo or a sustained note. If one sends dots too fast
over a long undersea circuit, they will run together
at the receiving end. Because the symbol we receive
at the far end of the circuit will be a slightly longer smoothed out rise and fall, not an exact replica. And sending pulses too fast, results in inter-symbol interference. This occurs, for example,
when the longer flow of a current bleeds into the next time division and perhaps reverses a zero to a one. So even if we are automating
the detection of these current levels, there is a
fundamental limit to how far we can squeeze two pulses together. And this is the same problem
Alice and Bob ran into with their string communication system, (snow rustling underfoot)
(heavy breathing) which we called the maximum pluck speed. If they plucked any faster
than two plucks per second, (plucked string reverberates) they noticed they started to bleed
together and they got confused. (Slow string music) So this is called the symbol rate. Remember, a symbol can be broadly defined as the current state of
some observable signal, which persists for a fixed period of time. Whether you are using fire,
(crackling) sound,
(single string plucked) electrical current,
anything, a signaling event is simply a change from
one state to another. So the symbol rate is the
number of signaling events which can be squeezed
together in one second. (Morse Code signals)