Digital Signals

Processing
(DSP)
 Signals & Systems
 Signal: Quantity that carries information: We encounter many types of signals
in various applications
Electrical signals: voltage, current, magnetic and electric fields,…
Mechanical signals: velocity, force, displacement,…
Acoustic signals: sound, vibration,…
Other signals: pressure, temperature,…
Systems
– “Something” that can manipulate, change, record,
or transmit signals
– Examples: CD, VCD/DVD

 Signal Processing is to study how to represent, convert, interpret, and process a signal
and the information contained in the signal
 Roots of DSP are in the 1960s and 1970s when digital computers first
became available.
 Classifications of Signals
A continuous-time signal is defined at every instant of time
• A discrete-time signal is defined at discrete instants of time, and hence, it is a
sequence of numbers
• A continuous-time signal with a continuous amplitude is usually called an analog signal
(e.g., speech)
• A discrete-time signal with discrete-valued amplitudes represented by a finite number
of digits is referred to as a digital signal
• A discrete-time signal with continuous-valued amplitudes
is called a sampled-data signal
• A continuous-time signal with discrete-value amplitudes is usually called a quantized
boxcar signal
• A signal that can be uniquely determined by a well defined process, such as a
mathematical expression or rule, or table look-up, is called a deterministic signal
• A signal that is generated in a random fashion and cannot be predicted ahead of time is
called a random signal
Continuous-time and discrete-time Signals
 Examples of Typical Signals
Electrocardiography (ECG) Signal – Represents the electrical activity of heart
 Examples of Typical Signals
 The ECG trace is a periodic waveform
 One period of the waveform shown below represents one cycle of the blood
transfer process from the heart to the arteries
 Examples of Typical Signals
Electroencephalogram (EEG) Signals - Represent the electrical activity
caused by the random firings of billions of neurons in the brain
 Examples of Typical Signals
Seismic Signals - Caused by the movement of rocks resulting from an earthquake, a
volcanic eruption, or an underground explosion
 Examples of Typical Signals
Black-and-white picture - Represents light intensity as a function of two spatial
coordinates
Examples of Typical Signals
Video signals - Consists of a sequence of images, called frames, and is a function of 3
variables: 2 spatial coordinates and time
 Analog Signal Processing

Most real-world signals are analog

They are continuous in time and amplitude
Convert to voltage or currents using sensors and transducers
Analog circuits process these signals using
Resistors, Capacitors, Inductors, Amplifiers,…
Analog signal processing examples
Audio processing in FM radios
Video processing in traditional TV sets
 Limitations of Analog Signal Processing
• Accuracy limitations due to
– Component tolerances
– Undesired nonlinearities
• Limited repeatability due to
– Changes in environmental conditions
• Temperature and Vibration
• Sensitivity to electrical noise
• Limited dynamic range for voltage and currents
• Inflexibility to changes
• Difficulty of implementing certain operations
– Nonlinear operations and Time-varying operations
• Difficulty of storing information
 Digital Signal Processing
• Represent signals by a sequence of numbers
– Sampling or analog-to-digital conversions
• Perform processing on these numbers with a digital processor
– Digital signal processing
• Reconstruct analog signal from processed numbers
– Reconstruction or digital-to-analog conversion

digital digital
signal signal

analog analog
signal A/D DSP D/A signal
Filtering is one of the most widely used signal processing operations
 Pros and Cons of Digital Signal Processing

• Pros
– Accuracy can be controlled by choosing word length
– Repeatable
– Sensitivity to electrical noise is minimal
– Dynamic range can be controlled using floating point numbers
– Flexibility can be achieved with software implementations
– Non-linear and time-varying operations are easier to implement
– Digital storage is cheap
– Digital information can be encrypted for security
– Price/performance and reduced time-to-market
• Cons
– Sampling causes loss of information
– A/D and D/A requires mixed-signal hardware
– Limited speed of processors
– Quantization and round-off errors
Overlap of DSP with other disciplines
Wide applications
of DSP
 Reference books
 Mitra, Sanjit Kumar, and Yonghong Kuo. Digital signal processing: a
computer-based approach. Vol. 2. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006.
 Oppenheim, Alan V, Schafer and Buck, Discrete-time signal processing.
Pearson Education India, 1999.
Thank you