1.3 Building Blocks of Digital Wireless

In the context of digital communication networks, we can think of the two users as either two nodes within the network, or as two end users, or parties who want to communicate. The idea here is that the above model can be used for a simple point-to-point system, or as a link in a complex network.

To simplify our discussion, we focus on a one-way link, as shown below. Here the source generates messages (think of strings of bits) for transmission to the destination user, or sink.