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Discrete-Time Signals and Systems

18 March, 2015 - 11:23

Mathematically, analog signals are functions having as their independent variables continuous quantities, such as space and time. Discrete-time signals are functions defined on the integers; they are sequences. As with analog signals, we seek ways of decomposing discrete-time signals into simpler components. Because this approach leads to a better understanding of signal structure, we can exploit that structure to represent information (create ways of representing information with signals) and to extract information (retrieve the information thus represented). For symbolic-valued signals, the approach is different: We develop a common representation of all symbolic-valued signals so that we can embody the information they contain in a unifed way. From an information representation perspective, the most important issue becomes, for both real-valued and symbolic-valued signals, efficiency: what is the most parsimonious and compact way to represent information so that it can be extracted later.