Chapter 4 - Digital processing of analogue signals

Abstract

This chapter reviews digital processing of analogue signals. Digital signal processing systems with analogue/digital interfaces are commonly used to process analogue signals. An analogue signal can be unambiguously reconstructed from a digital signal. It is important to understand the effects of the analogue/digital interfaces, and careful consideration must be given to aspects such as sampling and quantization of the analogue input and reconstruction of an analogue output from the processed digital signal. Nonlinear signal processing and non-time-invariant processing requires special consideration because the frequency components generated are not present in the input. It may be difficult to determine the extent of significant high frequency components generated by a nonlinear process but if this is the case an experimental approach can be followed by gradually increasing the sampling rate until the reconstructed signal is acceptably free of aliased components for suitable test signals.