Digital communications refers to the transmission of igital data. This is in contrast to analog communications. While analog communications use a continuously varying signal, a digital transmission can be broken down into discrete messages. Transmitting data in discrete messages allows for greater signal processing capability. The ability to process a communications signal means that errors caused by random processes can be detected and corrected. Digital signals can also be sampled instead of continuously monitored. The multiplexing of multiple digital signals is much simpler to the multiplexing of analog signals.