Data Communications Question:

Although my artistic ability leaves much to be desired, this wave form is a depiction of a simple analog signal. The key to the analog signal is that it is *continuous*. In other words, notice how the wave slowly rises, peaks, slowly descends, bottoms out and slowly climbs again. Taken as a simple example, imagine many forms of this wave signal. Some of the waves are closer together than others, some may have more height, still others may actually start their peaks and descents in entirely different places! Encoding data can be done based on these various kinds of wave changes.

One of the important considerations in analog communications is the ability to decode these continuous wave forms. With the introduction of noise, or other signal disturbance, decoding a analog signal properly can be difficult. This is why we turn to the digital communications system