Shannon capacity

In 1949, Claude Elwood Shannon and Warren Weaver[?] wrote The Mathematical Theory of Communication. (ISBN 0252725484) This founded the modern discipline of information theory. Thus it is possible to measure the amount of information in a message.

Shannon's law

<math>C = W \log_2(1 + S/N)</math>

where

C = bits per second - channel capacity,

W = frequency - bandwidth,

S/N = signal-to-noise ratio,

shows that there is a theoretical maximum amount of information that can be transmitted over a bandwidth-limited carrier in the ever-present background noise.