Signals traveling through transmission media experience impairment due to attenuation, distortion, and noise. Attenuation refers to loss of signal strength over distance. Distortion occurs when different frequency components of a signal arrive at different times due to traveling at different speeds. Noise refers to unwanted signals added from various sources like thermal noise, crosstalk, and impulse noise. Engineers measure signal impairment using metrics like decibels and signal-to-noise ratio.