From: steveu on
>dvsarwate <dvsarwate(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>But Eric's point about comm specsmanship brings to mind
>>an apocryphal story about how IBM won a contract for a
>>military comm. system. Both the IBM design and the
>>had the same data rate and same BER but the IBM design
>>used a rate 1/2 code while the competing design used a
>>rate 2/3 code. (The OP who is no doubt thoroughly bewildered
>>by the hijacking of this thread should work out what the
>>implications are for transmitter power and bandwidth in the
>>two designs). Anyway, IBM won because they told the
>>generals "In our system, we use one parity bit to protect
>>each data bit, whereas in the Brand X system each parity
>>bit has to protect *two* data bits and so their system
>>provides only half as much data protection as ours does."
>
>Brilliant.
>
>I'd bet someone a beer this was a system where the delivered
>datarate was an open figure, but the modulation order (and
>therefore, code rate) was classified.

These kinds of thing are usually said by a salesman. An engineer couldn't
say them with a straight face. The salesman often genuinely believe what
they are saying to be realistic. :-)

Steve

First  |  Prev  | 
Pages: 1 2 3 4
Prev: About Shannon Limit
Next: FFT Radix 3