The Main Features Of The Multiplexer

A mux or data selector, also known as a multiplexer is a piece of electronic equipment. It is capable of taking one, of several, analog or digital input signals and change it into one line. Multiplexers are used to increase data transfer over a specified bandwidth or time frame.

Essentially, this device allows multiple signals to share a device or resource. Demux, better known as demultiplexer, take one input signal and turn it into several data-output lines. This equipment is used in conjunction with multiplexers and usually sits on the receiving end.

Mux and demux share commonalities and differences. Multiplexers can be identified by their schematic symbol, which contains a isosceles trapezoid with a long and short side. On the long side there are input pins and on the small side, there is on output pin. This is because mux is a multiple input with single output device. Contrastingly, demux is a single input with multiple output structure.

Mux is commonly used within telecommunications where it can connect multiple input signals into a single output signal, which is carried across multiple communication channels. This is accomplished through a multiplex technique. The demux acts in the reverse of the mux. It can take a single input signal and separate it over several output signals. Those signals can then be transferred across multiple communication channels. The types of multiplexes used frequently in telecommunications: time division, statistical and frequency division.

Connecting mux and demux, on one channel, can save on costs. Generally, the cost is more expensive to implement channels for each individual data source than it the cost involved with the use of mux and demux devices. Sometimes the two are combined into one piece of equipment that is typically referred to as the multiplexer. There are also digital mux and demux equipment available.

These pieces of equipment can be chained. A large multiplexer may be developed using multiple multiplexers that have been chained together. For example, by taking on two-to-one multiplexer and two four-to-one multiplexers, a single eight-to-one mux can be created.

Sometimes mux are used a programmable logic devices or PLDs. This is usually done when modularity and cost savings is the desired result. To accomplish this process, custom logic circuits are created through the set up of logic arrangement in input signals. The selector inputs then begin to function as logic inputs.

This equipment is typically used within telecommunication and computer networks. The prime purpose of these devices is to share expensive resources. As its name suggests, inverse multiplexing, imux, aims to complete the opposite of multiplexing. Imux is focused on taking apart one data stream and from that single stream, creating several data streams. The streams are then transferred over numerous communication channels and the original stream is recreated. There are variations of multiplexing, they include: frequency division, space division, code division and time division. Variations exist between these classifications too. It can be possible to practice multiplexing over a wireless communication, but that usually requires polarization, multiple-input and multiple-output structures, and phased multi-antenna array.