Communications technologies – part 1
The increase in processing capacity has made possible to manage multiple communications channels. This is reaching a maturity with terminal devices (systems) able to manage a broad spectrum of frequencies at the same time and make autonomous decisions on which to use that will be leveraged in the next decade by 5G.
In autonomous systems communications is an embedded feature used both for internal and external communications, and the advanced management of spectrum provides much more flexibility. In many instances autonomous systems will keep their external communications activity to a minimum: since they are autonomous they will need the capability to be aware, understand their environment and act in consequence without having to rely on what others are doing. This is at the root of autonomy. They will need to capture, sense, what is going on and react accordingly. This sensing may be seen as a form of implicit communication. Likewise, their behaviour/reaction to a changing environment is a sort of implicit communications towards other systems in their proximity. A car that is blinking its direction light is sending a message to whoever minds to take it that it will soon turn in that direction. The communications taking place in living organisms, among cells, are examples of implicit communications. Discussion is still going on to see if among neurones and neural circuits there is also explicit communications going on or it is just another form of implicit communications. For sure in the brain there is a lot of implicit communications going on (all chemical changes, serotonin levels, as an example, are implicit communications).
Notice that in implicit communications there is no acknowledge coming, nor expected, although changes in the environment following an implicit communications may be indicating that the message was received and acted upon.