Advantages and disadvantages of Digital Communication

There are various digital communication tools such as instant messaging, email, mobile phones, desk phones, Twitter, LinkedIn, SMS, and many more. In many organizations, email is used for communication. Before e-mail, co-workers communicate with each other via mobile phone or face to face.

In this article, we are going to discuss the benefits and limitations of digital communication. This article can also be beneficial for students to write an essay or make their presentation on the pros and cons of digital communication. So, without any delay, let's start the topic.

Before going to benefits and limitations, let's first see a brief description of digital communication.

What is digital communication?

The process of transmitting information digitally by devices is Digital communication. It gives the facility of video conferencing that saves a lot of effort, time, and money. It is easier, cheaper, and faster as it can be done over large distances via the internet and other things. As compared to analog, the implementation of hardware in digital circuits is more flexible.

Digital communication has several advantages over the analog system, but it has some disadvantages too. Now, let's see the benefits and limitations of digital communication.

Advantages of Digital Communication

The benefits of digital communication over analog are listed as follows -

1. In digital signals, the impact of noise interference, distortion is less.
2. It facilitates video conferencing that saves time, money, and effort. We can perform video conferencing with someone or a group of people without any traveling. In video conferencing, we can see the facial expressions, which are helpful in reading the reaction of people.
3. It is easy to implement, less expensive.
4. It is used in military applications.
5. The correction and detection of errors are easy in digital communication, as there is a use of channel coding.
6. As compared to analog signals, it is easy to save and retrieve digital signals.
7. In digital signals, the configuring process is easy as compared to analog signals.
8. There is a common encoding technique in most digital circuits, so for a number of processes, similar devices can be used.
9. The probability of cross-talk is very less in digital communication.
10. The implementation of hardware is more flexible in digital communication.
11. In digital communication, to avoid signal jamming, the spread spectrum technique is used.
12. It also facilitates us with audio conferencing by which we can talk to someone or a group of people in another location without traveling. Thus, it saves time, effort, and money.
13. To maintain the secrecy of information, the signal processing functions like compression and encryption are employed in digital circuits.
14. Digital communication is cheaper and simpler compared to analog signals because of the advancement of IC technologies.

Now, let's see the limitations of Digital communication.

Disadvantages of Digital Communication

The limitations of digital communication are listed as follows -

1. There is high power consumption in digital communication.
2. There is a requirement for synchronization in the case of synchronous modulation.
3. There is a sampling error.
4. The most common limitation of digital communication is that it requires more transmission bandwidth. It is due to the higher data rate because of analog to digital conversion.
5. Digital communication requires analog to digital conversion at a high rate.
6. There can be a possibility of miscommunication if a user doesn't understand something.

Conclusion

That's all about the article. Here, we have seen the benefits and limitations of digital communication. Do not become a slave of digital technology while embracing the latest communication solutions. This means that we should own digital communication tools, but we should allow them to own us. Hope the article is informative and knowledgeable to you and provides you the sufficient information about the benefits and limitations of digital communication.