Baud refers to the unit of symbol rate or signaling rate in telecommunications, representing the number of signal changes or symbols transmitted per second over a communication channel. In simpler terms, it measures how many times the signal carrying the data changes state in one second. While often confused with bits per second (bps), baud and bps are not always the same. If each signal change (or symbol) represents more than one bit of data, the bps rate will be higher than the baud rate. Baud rate is a key factor in determining the speed and efficiency of data transmission, particularly in older communication systems like modems.
