In communication

Communication

Communication is the activity of conveying meaningful information. Communication requires a sender, a message, and an intended recipient, although the receiver need not be present or aware of the sender's intent to communicate at the time of communication; thus communication can occur across vast...

, a code word is an element of a standardized code

Code

A code is a rule for converting a piece of information into another form or representation , not necessarily of the same type....

 or protocol

Communications protocol

A communications protocol is a system of digital message formats and rules for exchanging those messages in or between computing systems and in telecommunications...

. Each code word is assembled in accordance with the specific rules of the code and assigned a unique meaning. Code words are typically used for reasons of reliability, clarity, brevity, or secrecy.

Background

Coding Theory

Coding theory

Coding theory is the study of the properties of codes and their fitness for a specific application. Codes are used for data compression, cryptography, error-correction and more recently also for network coding...

 is the branch of mathematics

Mathematics

Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

 that covers source code

Source coding

In information theory, Shannon's source coding theorem establishes the limits to possible data compression, and the operational meaning of the Shannon entropy....

s and channel code

Channel code

In digital communications, a channel code is a broadly used term mostly referring to the forward error correction code and bit interleaving in communication and storage where the communication media or storage media is viewed as a channel...

s.

A channel code

Channel code

In digital communications, a channel code is a broadly used term mostly referring to the forward error correction code and bit interleaving in communication and storage where the communication media or storage media is viewed as a channel...

 contains redundancy to allow more reliable communication in the presence of noise

Noise

In common use, the word noise means any unwanted sound. In both analog and digital electronics, noise is random unwanted perturbation to a wanted signal; it is called noise as a generalisation of the acoustic noise heard when listening to a weak radio transmission with significant electrical noise...

. This redundancy means that only a limited set of signals is allowed: this set is the code.

A source code

Source code

In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...

 is used to compress words (or phrases or data) by mapping common words into shorter words.

Procedure word

Procedure word

Procedure words or prowords are words or phrases limited to radio telephone procedure used to facilitate communication by conveying information in a condensed standard form. - OUT :...

s are used for voice communication on noisy channels.

External links

• UNHCR Procedure for Radio Communication