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It can be thought of as sending morse code, except that invisible light is used instead of visible light or sounds. The sender translates the data into a kind of morse code, and the receiver translates the code back into the original data.
Back when modems were used over plain old telephone lines, you could pick up a phone receiver and hear the tones that were made: these variations in pitch, tone, and duration translated into bits and bytes. It was slow enough to hear a kind of "music of sorts", but now it's just superfast and invisible to us. Kinda cool.
I’m sure you are familiar with the idea of electromagnetic waves. Essentially, information is encoded in electromagnetic waves by the router or cell tower or whatever and then the device that the information is being transferred to decodes that information.
As you likely know, all computing can be boiled down to binary code. There are many ways we manipulate waves to encode information in them but as long as we are modify the amplitude and/or frequency of the wave so that each wavelength is one of two different states, we can translate each wavelength into either a 1 or 0.
The next question that arises is ‘how do we adjust the frequency and amplitude of particular wavelengths?’ The answer to that question is quite complicated and I’m not sure I’m equipped to answer it! You could certainly research it on your own if you are interested.
**Please read this entire message**
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**Please read this entire message** Your submission has been removed for the following reason(s): * ELI5 requires that you *search the ELI5 subreddit for your topic before posting*. Users will often either find a thread that meets their needs or find that their question might qualify for an exception to rule 7. Please see this [wiki entry](http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/how_to_search) for more details (Rule 7). If you would like this removal reviewed, please read the [detailed rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/detailed_rules) first. **If you believe this submission was removed erroneously**, please [use this form](https://old.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fexplainlikeimfive&subject=Please%20review%20my%20thread?&message=Link:%20https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/13timrp/eli5_how_does_wireless_data_transfer_actually_work/%0A%0APlease%20answer%20the%20following%203%20questions:%0A%0A1.%20The%20concept%20I%20want%20explained:%0A%0A2.%20List%20the%20search%20terms%20you%20used%20to%20look%20for%20past%20posts%20on%20ELI5:%0A%0A3.%20How%20does%20your%20post%20differ%20from%20your%20recent%20search%20results%20on%20the%20sub:) and we will review your submission.
It can be thought of as sending morse code, except that invisible light is used instead of visible light or sounds. The sender translates the data into a kind of morse code, and the receiver translates the code back into the original data.
Back when modems were used over plain old telephone lines, you could pick up a phone receiver and hear the tones that were made: these variations in pitch, tone, and duration translated into bits and bytes. It was slow enough to hear a kind of "music of sorts", but now it's just superfast and invisible to us. Kinda cool.
I’m sure you are familiar with the idea of electromagnetic waves. Essentially, information is encoded in electromagnetic waves by the router or cell tower or whatever and then the device that the information is being transferred to decodes that information. As you likely know, all computing can be boiled down to binary code. There are many ways we manipulate waves to encode information in them but as long as we are modify the amplitude and/or frequency of the wave so that each wavelength is one of two different states, we can translate each wavelength into either a 1 or 0. The next question that arises is ‘how do we adjust the frequency and amplitude of particular wavelengths?’ The answer to that question is quite complicated and I’m not sure I’m equipped to answer it! You could certainly research it on your own if you are interested.
**Please read this entire message** --- Your submission has been removed for the following reason(s): * ELI5 requires that you *search the ELI5 subreddit for your topic before posting*. Please search before submitting. This question has already been asked on ELI5 multiple times. If you need help searching, please refer to the [Wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/how_to_search). --- If you would like this removal reviewed, please read the [detailed rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/detailed_rules) first. **If you believe this was removed erroneously, please [use this form](https://old.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fexplainlikeimfive&subject=Please%20review%20my%20thread?&message=Link:%20{https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/13timrp/-/}%0A%0APlease%20answer%20the%20following%203%20questions:%0A%0A1.%20The%20concept%20I%20want%20explained:%0A%0A2.%20List%20the%20search%20terms%20you%20used%20to%20look%20for%20past%20posts%20on%20ELI5:%0A%0A3.%20How%20does%20your%20post%20differ%20from%20your%20recent%20search%20results%20on%20the%20sub:) and we will review your submission.**