Communication in the Presence of Noise

A method is developed for representing any communication system geometrically. Messages and the corresponding signals are points in two “function spaces,” and the modulation process is a mapping of one space into the other. Using this representation, a number of results in communication theory are deduced concerning expansion and compression of bandwidth and the threshold effect. Formulas are found for the maximum rate of transmission of binary digits over a system when the signal is perturbed by various types of noise. Some of the properties of “ideal” systems which transmit at this maximum rate are discussed. The equivalent number of binary digits per second for certain information sources is calculated.

Jay Smith is an Information Security Consultant with Online Business Systems’ Security Consulting Practice. Jay is a co-founder of the Winnipeg chapter of the Security BSides conference a and is a Director of the SkullSpace, Winnipeg’s hackerspace. He is very active in the application security space in Winnipeg and recently delivered the keynote at the 2015 Prairie Developer’s Conference entitled “These Walls Can Talk” which discussed the security aspects of the Internet of Things.