In telecommunications and computer networking, a communication channel or channe

l, refers either to a physical transmission medium such as a wire, or to a logic

al connection over a multiplexed medium such as a radio channel. A channel is us
ed to convey an information signal, for example a digital bit stream, from one o
r several senders (or transmitters) to one or several receivers. A channel has a
certain capacity for transmitting information, often measured by its bandwidth
in Hz or its data rate in bits per second.
Communicating data from one location to another requires some form of pathway or
medium. These pathways, called communication channels, use two types of media:
cable (twisted-pair wire, cable, and fiber-optic cable) and broadcast (microwave
, satellite, radio, and infrared). Cable or wire line media use physical wires o
f cables to transmit data and information. Twisted-pair wire and coaxial cables
are made of copper, and fiber-optic cable is made of glass.
Digital channel models[edit]
In a digital channel model, the transmitted message is modelled as a digital sig
nal
Examples of digital channel models are:
Binary symmetric channel (BSC), a discrete memoryless channel with a certain bit
error probability
Binary bursty bit error channel model, a channel "with memory"
Binary erasure channel (BEC), a discrete channel with a certain bit error detect
ion (erasure) probability
Packet erasure channel, where packets are lost with a certain packet loss probab
ility or packet error rate
Arbitrarily varying channel (AVC), where the behavior and state of the channel c
an change randomly
Analog channel models[edit]
In an analog channel model, the transmitted message is modelled as an analog sig
nal. The model can be a linear or non-linear, time-continuous or time-discrete (
sampled), memoryless or dynamic (resulting in burst errors), time-invariant or t
ime-variant (also resulting in burst errors), baseband, passband (RF signal mode
l), real-valued or complex-valued signal model. The model may reflect the follow
ing channel impairments:
Types of communications channels[edit]
Digital (discrete) or analog (continuous) channel
Baseband and passband channel
Transmission medium, for example a fibre channel
Multiplexed channel
Computer network virtual channel
Simplex communication, duplex communication or half duplex communication channel
Return channel
Uplink or downlink (upstream or downstream channel)
Broadcast channel, unicast channel or multicast channel
hese are examples of commonly used channel capacity and performance measures:
Spectral bandwidth in Hertz
Symbol rate in baud, pulses/s or symbols/s
Digital bandwidth bit/s measures: gross bit rate (signalling rate), net bit rate
(information rate), channel capacity, and maximum throughput
Channel utilization
Link spectral efficiency