Overhead information is digital information transferred across the functional interface between a user and a telecommunications system, or between functional units within a telecommunications system, for the purpose of directing or controlling the transfer of user information or the detection and correction of errors.
Overhead information originated by the user is not considered to be system overhead information. Overhead information generated within the communications system and not delivered to the user is system overhead information. Thus, the user throughput is reduced by both overheads while system throughput is reduced only by system overhead.
Famous quotes containing the words overhead and/or information:
“During a walk or in a book or in the middle of an embrace, suddenly I awake to a stark amazement at everything. The bare fact of existence paralyzes me... To be alive is so incredible that all I can do is to lie still and merely breathe—like an infant on its back in a cot. It is impossible to be interested in anything in particular while overhead the sun shines or underneath my feet grows a single blade of grass.”
—W.N.P. Barbellion (1889–1919)
“So while it is true that children are exposed to more information and a greater variety of experiences than were children of the past, it does not follow that they automatically become more sophisticated. We always know much more than we understand, and with the torrent of information to which young people are exposed, the gap between knowing and understanding, between experience and learning, has become even greater than it was in the past.”
—David Elkind (20th century)