Hi all: Why is it that we have a dozen or so different electromagnetic wave types and yet every one of them can be used for analog and digital communication?
Thanks!
In: Physics
There aren’t really different types of electromagnetic waves, we’ve just arbitrarily split up the spectrum into frequency ranges. It’s kind of like how we categorize visible wavelengths as different colors, all usable for both paintings and writing letters, even though the spectrum blends them all together at the edges.
Sometimes the wavelength actually matters, for example if you’re trying to get the signal through walls or windows, or if you care about whether it will have enough energy to damage your body. But for the purpose of encoding a signal, they all work pretty much the same.
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