How to find out the signal rate practically?

I am quite confused with this "signal rate". If I send 100 bits using just one signal in one second (just assume .It's not possible unless all bits are equal) then what is the signal rate?


Here's the next question
In one second I got these signals



+1, 0 , -1, +1, 0 , -1

What is the signal rate now?


Thanks in advance.


Someone please answer my question.

There's bits per second and there's bytes per second.

Techies like to use abbreviations so they say bps or kbps or mbps when talking about basic specs for communication. That is, bits per second.

However it's easy for the uninitiated to misunderstand when they see mbps, and think that means it will take one second to download a 1 megabyte file. (I suspect modem manufacturers don't mind having people misunderstand if it makes their device sound faster than it is.)

The conversion rate is roughly 10:1. So the 1 megabyte file will take 10 seconds. Each byte requires about 10 bits time.

If I send 100 bits using just one signal in one second (just assume .It's not possible unless all bits are equal) then what is the signal rate?

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Roughly ten bytes per second. Depending on protocol settings.

Here's the next question
In one second I got these signals
+1, 0 , -1, +1, 0 , -1
What is the signal rate now?

Click to expand...

Looks as though you received 6 data in one second. I like to call it a transfer rate of 6 bytes per second.

As for the bit rate, it cannot be determined without knowing how you had set such things as parity, 7 or 8 bits as a datum, stop bits, etc. A rough figure is 60 bps.

BradtheRad said:

Looks as though you received 6 data in one second. I like to call it a transfer rate of 6 bytes per second.

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In the book that I am having ( Data Communications and Networking by Forouzan) he considers +1 0 -1 as one signal and it is periodic as you can clearly see from my question. So he says that the signal rate is only 2 per second.

In the book that I am having ( Data Communications and Networking by Forouzan) he considers +1 0 -1 as one signal and it is periodic as you can clearly see from my question. So he says that the signal rate is only 2 per second.

Click to expand...

It's a good example for the fact, that your original question can't e answered without additional information.

The signal rate of 2/s can be calculated if you know, that one bit is e.g. represented by a sequence of +1 0 -1 or -1 0 +1 respectively. In other words, signal rate isn't a property of the shown sequence. It's a property of the channel and can be only determined by analyzing the possible codes.

If you don't know it, you can e.g. assume, that each voltage step is representing one bit(or even 1.58 bits in a three level coding).