In telecommunications and computing, bitrate (sometimes written bit rate, data rate or as a variable Rbit) is the number of bits that are conveyed or processed per unit of time. Bit rate is often used as synonym to the terms connection speed, transfer rate, channel capacity, maximum throughput and digital bandwidth capacity of a communication system.
In digital multimedia, bitrate is the number of bits used per unit of time to represent a continuous medium such as audio or video after source coding (data compression). In this sense it corresponds to the term digital bandwidth consumption, or goodput.
The bit rate is quantified using the 'bit per second' (bit/s or bps) unit, often in conjunction with a SI prefix such as kilo (kbit/s or kbps), Mega (Mbit/s or Mbps), Giga (Gbit/s or Gbps) or Tera (Tbit/s or Tbps).
For the rest of the Wikipedia entry on the above term, go here.
Have you read these related articles?
Newsletter:
