Binary erasure channel erasure channel which shares many similar theoretical results with the binary erasure channel. The BEC is a "binary channel"; that is, it can transmit only one of two symbols (usually called 0 and 1). (A non-binary channel would be capable of transmitting more than two symbols, possibly even an infinite number of choices.) The channel is not perfect and sometimes the bit gets "erased"; that is, the bit gets scrambled so the receiver has no idea what the bit was. The BEC is, in a sense, error-free. Unlike the binary symmetric channel, when the receiver gets a bit, it is
Binary number as 0 hexagrams can be interpreted as sequence from 0 to 63. The Indian scholar Pingala (c. 2nd century BC) developed a binary system for describing prosody. He used binary numbers in the form of short and long syllables (the latter equal in length to two short syllables), making it similar to Morse code. Pingala's Hindu classic titled Chandaḥśāstra (8.23) describes the formation of a matrix in order to give a unique value to each meter. The binary representations in Pingala's system increases towards the right, and not to the left like in the binary numbers of the modern, Western