Jelminség

Jelminség, often referred to as jelminőség in Hungarian, is a term used in signal processing and telecommunications to describe the overall fidelity of a transmitted signal as it is received and interpreted. The word is formed from jel (signal) and minőség (quality). In practice, jelminség encompasses how accurately the received signal preserves amplitude, phase, timing, and spectral content after passing through a communication channel, under the influence of noise and distortion.

Jelminség is assessed with objective metrics such as signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), signal-to-distortion ratio, and bit error rate (BER), as well as perceptual measures like mean opinion score (MOS) and perceptual evaluations using tools such as PESQ or POLQA for voice signals. While objective metrics quantify physical properties, subjective assessments relate to user experience. In digital systems, higher jelminség generally corresponds to lower BER and higher decoded quality.

Several factors affect jelminség: channel noise and interference, multipath fading, distortion from nonlinearity, quantization and sampling errors, synchronization inaccuracies, and compression artefacts. System design choices—modulation, coding, equalization, and error-correction—trade off data rate against achievable jelminség.

Applications include mobile networks, broadcasting, streaming, and sensing systems where maintaining acceptable jelminség is essential for quality of service. Challenges include varying channel conditions, the gap between objective metrics and perceived quality, and the need for standards that relate measurements to user experience.

Related topics include signal processing, communications engineering, MOS, PESQ, POLQA, SNR, BER, and QoS.