what is BAUD RATE in layman's term?

Question

what is BAUD RATE? how is it different to bit rate? please explain in layman's term...

Answer 1

In layman's terms baud rate is how much stuff (data) can flow down the "pipes" (or phone lines) and into your computer as measured in bits per second, kilobits per second, or megabits per second depending on how fast a connection you have. Its essentially the same thing as far as a layman is concerned.

Answer 2

Bit rate = bits per second.
Baud rate = symbols per second.

What's a bit? A bit is the smallest unit of digital information. It is a binary unit, meaning it can have 2 possible values -- on or off, which you'll recognize as 1 or 0. Any digital data can be broken down at its smallest level into bits. This could be a jpg file, a video, a single letter of text, etc.

What's a symbol? A symbol is the smallest unit of information transmitted over a transmission medium (e.g. a wire). A symbol can be composed of more than one bit.

So, the difference in layman's terms, depends on the transmission medium in question. If you're talking about telephonic modems, then the difference depends on the transmission standard. The v.29 standard, for example, uses a symbol size of 4 bits. So, for v.29 modems, the bit rate is four times the baud rate.

Answer 3

Baud rate is the number of -changes- in a data modulated signal per unit of time. Bit rate is the number of bits sent per unit of time. They are frequently the same, or bit rate may be higher than baud rate.
For example, say you encripted bits three at a time such that
000 = 1khz
001 = 1.1khx
010 = 1.2khz
....
111 = 1.7 khz.
Now, if you send a 1/10 second burst of the tone corresponding to the bit pattern you'll be sending, then your baude rate is 10 baud. But the bit rate is 30 bits per sec.

HTH

Doug