ion rms stands for root-mean square, the square root of the average (mean) of the square(s) of the values (of level in this case). 11 These dB values are for a "Nyquist bandwidth" accommodating 2 bits per Hz; for a bit-rate bandwidth, 1 bit/Hz, the values would be 9.5 dB and 12.5 dB, respectively. DATA COMMUNICATIONS 10.9.4 Channel Capacity A leased or switched voice channel represents a financial investment. Therefore one goal of the system engineer is to derive as much benefit as possible from the money invested. For the case of digital transmission, this is done by maximizing the information transfer across the system. This section discusses how much information in bits can be transmitted, relating information to bandwidth, signal-to-noise ratio, and error rate. These matters are discussed empirically in Section 10.9.5. First, looking at very basic information theory, Shannon stated in his classic paper (Ref. 10) that if input information rate to a band-limited channel is less than C (bps), a code exists for which the error rate approaches zero as the message length becomes infinite. Conversely, if the input rate exceeds C, the error rate cannot be reduced below some finite positive number. The usual voice channel is approximated by a Gaussian band-limited channel (GBLC) with additive Gaussian noise. 12 For such a channel, consider a signal wave of mean power of S watts applied at the input of an ideal low-pass filter that has a bandwidth of W (Hz) and contains an internal source of mean Gaussian noise with a mean power of N watts uniformly distributed over the passband. The capacity in bits per second is given by Applying Shannon's "capacity" formula to an ordinary voice channel (GBLC) of band- width (W) 3000 Hz and a signal-to-noise S/N ratio of 1023 (about 30 dB), the capacity of the channel is 30,000 bps. (Remember that bits per second and bauds are interchangeable in binary systems.) Neither S/N nor W is an unreasonable value. Seldom, however, can we achieve a modulation rate greater than 3000 bauds. The 