Friday, May 9, 2008

Communication Types

There are 3 basic type of communication as illustrated in the following diagram:

A message consists in a sequence of symbols, purposely chosen, from a lexicon. Note that the time-domain is not part of the information conveyed.

Open Sequence
An open sequence of messages carries information through the messages themselves but also through the order of the sequence i.e. the order in which the messages must be interpretated matters.

Timed Sequence
In a timed sequence, the time-domain adds information to the communication. Each symbol occupies, purposely, a temporal position in the ordered sequence. The receiving-end of the communication expects this timing to be respected in order to interpret the communication.