delay

delay

[di′lā]

(communications)

Time required for a signal to pass through a device or a conducting medium.

Time which elapses between the instant at which any designated point of a transmitted wave passes any two designated points of a transmission circuit; such delay is primarily determined by the constants of the circuit.

(industrial engineering)

Interruption of the normal tempo of an operation; may be avoidable or unavoidable.

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

delay

i. As it pertains to air traffic control, delays are incurred when a controller takes any action that prevents an aircraft from proceeding normally to its destination for an interval of 15 minutes or more. This includes actions to delay departing, en route, or arriving aircraft, as well as actions taken at destination airports. See also absolute delay.
ii. In radar operations, the ground distance from a point directly beneath the aircraft to the beginning of the area of a radar scan.
iii. The electronic delay of the start of the time base used to select a particular segment of the total.

An Illustrated Dictionary of Aviation Copyright © 2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Delay

 

in automatic control systems, a phenomenon that consists in the fact that when the input signal of a system or device begins to change, the output signal begins to change only after a certain time interval, called the delay time. The component of the delay time determined by the final intrinsic rate of propagation of the signal is called the transport delay. Delay may also be caused by the inertia of the system. In electronic simulation equipment, delay is created artificially in delay circuits, which retard the reproduction of the signal by some predetermined time interval. Such delay is used in the simulation of many technological processes associated with matter transfer or power transmission.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.