Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A discrete signal or discrete-time signal is a time series consisting of a sequence of quantities. Unlike a continuous-time signal, a discrete-time signal is not a function of a continuous argument; however, it may have been obtained by sampling from a continuous-time signal.
The term discrete-time refers to the fact that the transform operates on discrete data, often samples whose interval has units of time. From uniformly spaced samples it produces a function of frequency that is a periodic summation of the continuous Fourier transform of the original continuous function.
Thus it is a sequence of discrete-time data. Examples of time series are heights of ocean tides, counts of sunspots, and the daily closing value of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. A time series is very frequently plotted via a run chart (which is a temporal line chart).
The conversion from continuous time to samples (discrete-time) changes the underlying Fourier transform of () into a discrete-time Fourier transform (DTFT), which generally entails a type of distortion called aliasing. Choice of an appropriate sample-rate (see Nyquist rate) is the key to minimizing that distortion.
In signal processing, this definition can be used to evaluate the Z-transform of the unit impulse response of a discrete-time causal system.. An important example of the unilateral Z-transform is the probability-generating function, where the component [] is the probability that a discrete random variable takes the value.
A Fourier series, by nature, has a discrete set of components with a discrete set of coefficients, also a discrete sequence. So a DFS is a representation of one sequence in terms of another sequence. Well known examples are the Discrete Fourier transform and its inverse transform. [1]: ch 8.1
That is, it takes a function from the time domain into the frequency domain; it is a decomposition of a function into sinusoids of different frequencies; in the case of a Fourier series or discrete Fourier transform, the sinusoids are harmonics of the fundamental frequency of the function being analyzed.
When interpreted as time, if the index set of a stochastic process has a finite or countable number of elements, such as a finite set of numbers, the set of integers, or the natural numbers, then the stochastic process is said to be in discrete time. [54] [55] If the index set is some interval of the real line, then time is said to be continuous.