In telecommunication

Telecommunication

Telecommunication is the transmission of information over significant distances to communicate. In earlier times, telecommunications involved the use of visual signals, such as beacons, smoke signals, semaphore telegraphs, signal flags, and optical heliographs, or audio messages via coded...

, the term stop signal has the following meanings:

1. In asynchronous serial communication, a signal at the end of a character

Character (computing)

In computer and machine-based telecommunications terminology, a character is a unit of information that roughly corresponds to a grapheme, grapheme-like unit, or symbol, such as in an alphabet or syllabary in the written form of a natural language....

 that prepares the receiving device for the reception of a subsequent character. A stop signal is usually limited to one signal element

Signal element

In signal theory, a signal element is a part of a signal that is distinguished by its:*duration,*magnitude,*nature ,*relative position to other elements,*transition from one signal state to another....

having any duration equal to or greater than a specified minimum value.

2. A signal to a receiving mechanism to wait for the next signal.