COMPANDING

Communications Systems Glossary

Communications Systems — Companding

Information on Companding

Many analogue signals are not best digitised using uniform quantisation steps. For example, in speech small signal amplitudes are more common that large ones. For these signals the quantisation noise can be reduced by using smaller steps for lower amplitudes and larger steps for higher amplitudes. In effect, this compresses the signal range before transmission and expands it at the receiver. This compressing and expanding results in the term companding.

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