Smartphones connect to the internet wirelessly. When you send a text from your phone, the phone must first convert the information in the text into radio waves. The phone then sends these radio waves wirelessly to a nearby receiver that is connected to the internet. Describe the analog/digital conversion that occurs when you send a text. Be sure to include the definitions of both terms.
When you send a text from your smartphone, the analog information in the text (such as the letters and symbols) first needs to be converted into digital signals. Analog information is continuous and can take on any value within a range, while digital signals are discrete and represented by a series of 0s and 1s.
The smartphone's processor takes the analog information from the text and converts it into a series of digital signals by sampling the analog signal at specific intervals and quantizing the signal into discrete values. This process is known as analog-to-digital conversion (ADC).
Once the information is converted into digital signals, the phone then modulates these signals onto radio waves for transmission wirelessly. This modulation process changes the characteristics of the digital signals to match those of radio waves, allowing the information to be sent over the air to a receiver connected to the internet.
At the receiver, the radio waves are demodulated back into digital signals and then converted back into analog signals using a digital-to-analog converter (DAC). The analog signals are then processed to extract the original text information, which can be displayed on the recipient's smartphone screen.