
1) Sampling: sampling is the reduction of a continuous-time signal to a discrete-time signal. A common example is the conversion of a sound wave, a continuous signal, to a sequence of samples, a discrete-time signal.
2) Quantization: quantization is the proces of mapping input values from large set(often continuous set) to output values in a (countable) smaller set, often with a finite number of elements. Rouding and Truncation are typical examples of quantization processes.
3) Encoding : After each sample is quantized and the number of bits per smaple is decided, each sample can be changed to an nb-bit code word. The number of bits for each sample is determined from the number of quantization levels. If the number of quantization level is L, the number of bits is nb=log2.L