Signal processing

The term signal processing encompasses all processing steps that aim to extract information from a (received or measured) signal or to prepare information for transmission from an information source to an information consumer. Important goals of signal processing are the acquisition of information about the behavior of processes, the reduction of data and the preparation for visualization.

Digital and analog signal processing

A distinction is made between digital and analog signal processing. The winning digital signal processing more and more due to the following advantages in importance:

• The results of digital signal processing are reproducible, component tolerances due to temperature fluctuations or aging processes have less of an impact.
• The desired processing steps can often be implemented more easily with digital processing (e.g. by programming microcontrollers ).
• Digital signal processing allows storage and simple further processing (transmission to other systems, e.g. controls ).
• Digital signal processing enables a favorable signal-to-noise ratio S / N to be achieved for the samples to be processed, depending on the selected or available bit width on DSPs , FPGAs , microcontrollers or signal processing software.

Disadvantages of digital signal processing:

• They are analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) and / or digital-to-analog converters (DAUs) with a certain sampling rate (influence on the maximum scannable frequency; see Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem ) and a certain measurement accuracy (influence on the quantization deviation ) necessary.
• In some cases, the double conversion (analog → digital and later digital → analog again) is necessary with the restrictions or sources of error mentioned above.
• The implementation of some processing steps and also the execution of processing steps can sometimes be very time-consuming. Time restrictions during the processing of the processing steps can make approximation methods necessary.

A basic distinction can be made between one-dimensional (e.g. audio signals , seismic signals), two-dimensional (e.g. images) and three-dimensional (e.g. moving images, video ) signal processing.

literature

• Martin Meyer: Signal processing. Analog and digital signals - systems and filters, 8th edition, Springer Fachmedien, Wiesbaden 2017, ISBN 978-3-658-18320-2 .
• Hans W. Schüßler: Digital signal processing 2nd design of discrete systems, Springer Verlag, Berlin / Heidelberg 2010, ISBN 978-3-642-01118-4 .
• Lutz von Wangenheim: Analog signal processing. System theory - electronics - filters - oscillators, 1st edition, Vieweg + Teubner Verlag, Wiesbaden 2010, ISBN 978-3-8348-0764-9 .

See also

• Information theory
• Digital filter | Filter (electrical engineering)
• Image processing | Audio signal

Web links

• Basic knowledge of signal processing (accessed on July 9, 2018)
• Digital signal processing (accessed July 9, 2018)
• Signal processing (accessed July 9, 2018)
• Basics of digital signal processing (accessed on July 9, 2018)