Amateur radio, often called ham radio, is both a hobby and a service in which participants, called "hams," use various types of radio communications equipment to communicate with other radio amateurs for public service, recreation and self-training.[1]
Amateur radio operators enjoy personal (and often worldwide) wireless communications with each other and are able to support their communities with emergency and disaster communications if necessary, while increasing their personal knowledge of electronics and radio theory. An estimated six million people throughout the world are regularly involved with amateur radio.[2]
The term "amateur" is not a reflection on the skills of the participants, which are often quite advanced; rather, "amateur" indicates that amateur radio communications are not allowed to be made for commercial or money-making purposes.
A transceiver is a device that has both a transmitter and a receiver which are combined and share common circuitry or a single housing. If no circuitry is common between transmit and receive functions, the device is a transmitter-receiver. The term originated in the early 1920s. Technically, transceivers must combine a significant amount of the transmitter and receiver handling circuitry. Similar devices include transponders, transverters, and repeaters.
Transceivers known as Medium Attachment Units were widely used in 10base2 and 10base5 Ethernet networks. Fibre-optic gigabit and 10 gigabit Ethernet utilize transceivers known as GBIC, SFP, XFP and XAUI.
Radio technology
In radio terminology, a transceiver means a unit which contains both a receiver and a transmitter. It was quite common to have these units separated. Ham radio operators can build their own equipment and it is always easier to design and build a simple unit having one of the functions, transmitting or receiving. Almost every modern amateur radio equipment is now a transceiver but there is an active market for pure radio receivers, mainly for Shortwave listening operators. An example of a transceiver would be a walkie-talkie, or a CB radio.
Telephony
On a wired telephone, the handset contains the transmitter and receiver for the audio. The whole unit is colloquially referred to as a "receiver." On a mobile telephone or other radiotelephone, the entire unit is a transceiver, for both audio and radio.
A cordless telephone uses an audio and radio transceiver for the handset, and a radio transceiver for the base station. If a speakerphone is included in a wired telephone base or in a cordless base station (less common), the base also becomes an audio transceiver in addition to the handset.
A modem is also a transceiver, but is usually called by its own name rather than the more generic one.
