DSP and modem in the aid of information technology

The present age is the age of information technology (IT), due to which the world has shrunk into a small personal computer (PC). Information in any form (speech, text or pictures) can be transmitted from one corner of the world to another without any delay. IT has revolutionized the entire communication systems. Data communication is the area which is changing very rapidly. Communication of data can be done via various channels such as analog phone lines, digital subscriber loop (DSL), fiber optic cables etc. Although communication systems are switching from analog to their digital counterpart due to less noise and the superiority of digital systems over analog, the analog telephone system remains the primary facility utilized for data communication. According to industry research firm Jupiter Communication, there are more than 50 million people around the world-using dial up technology to access the Internet, that is why the present case study is aimed at data communication over analog telephone lines also called public switched telephone networks (PSTN) line or general switched telephone networks (GSTN) line. The recent expansion in the use of Internet and multimedia applications has created the requirement for much higher bit rates. Using current V.90 modem technology along with the use of advanced DSP like Texas Instrument's TMS320C6201 one can implement a whole modem on a single chip and achieve data rates up to 56 kbps. Hence it is concluded that both DSP and modem play a very important role in information technology.