Serial communication Serial communication In telecommunication and data transmission, serial communication is the process of sending data one bit at a time, sequentially, over a communication channel or computer bus. This is in contrast to parallel communication, where several bits are sent as a whole, on a link with several parallel channels. Serial communication is used for all long-haul communication and most computer networks, where the cost of cable and synchronization difficulties make parallel communication impractical. Serial computer buses are becoming more common even at shorter distances, as improved signal integrity and transmission speeds in newer serial technologies have begun to outweigh
Serial digital interface application and interoperability. An 8-bit parallel digital interface is defined by ITU-R Rec. 601; this is obsolete (however, many clauses in the various standards accommodate the possibility of an 8-bit interface). In SD and ED applications, the serial data format is defined to 10 bits wide, whereas in HD applications, it is 20 bits wide, divided into two parallel 10-bit datastreams (known as Y and C). The SD datastream is arranged like this: whereas the HD datastreams are arranged like this: For all serial digital interfaces (excluding the obsolete composite encodings), the native color encoding is YCbCr format. The luminance