It tells you that if you put 1 volt across a 1 ohm resistor, then 1 amp will flow. How? What is carrying my data? Only EM waves travel this fast. I read somewhere that wires transmit data almost at the speed of So it is actually an EM wave, not a massive object (like an electron) that is carrying the signal along the wire. When a signal propagates along a wire, it's actually the electromagnetic field between the wire and a nearby 'ground' or 'return' conductor that is propagating. According to what works best in your design.Īnother way to look at things is that the voltage at a location on the wire is just a simpler way of looking at the fact that there is an electric field between the wire and everything around it. But you could choose any two voltages you like. Often a high voltage (5 V) indicates a '1' and a low voltage (0 V) indicates a '0'. So we can say the data is encoded as voltage pulses or current pulses, it doesn't really matter. The current is flowing because there is a voltage on the wire, and there is a conductive path from that voltage to a lower voltage. I have not studied communication modes.Ĭurrent and voltage are inseperable. I may be missing a lot many basic points here. What is carrying my data? Only EM waves travel this fast. I read somewhere that wires transmit data almost at the speed of light. So if it were current carrying my data it would not travel this fast. But my data is received almost instantly. The speed of the electrons depends on the voltage applied (that's what I remember from school). How does this current carry the data? Current is basically flowing electrons.

Now if it were a digital signal, the value would be transmitted as a combination of high and low voltage. This analog signal will then travel over the wire and reach its destination where it will again be converted to binary and the user will receive the number. Then it will be sent to the modem which will convert to an analog signal. It will be converted to binary and become 00001010.

Suppose from my PC, if I want to transmit the number ten. What I want to know is what exactly is carrying the data. I know this is a very basic question but the answers returned by google are way too complicated for me to understand.

Signalwire