I thought this was supposed to be an obvious question, until I finally set up my real time system.
So basically I have a transmitter that sends 128 samples/second to a receiver. The transmitted information is stored as an object in MATLAB and continuously updated.
When people talk about real time signal processing, I'm really confused as to what they mean by real time.
For example, say I want to extract the "mean" feature of this signal. Do I compute the mean when I receive one sample, two samples, all 128 samples, or ...what is this mean value?
More intriguing for me is the prospect of doing real time wavelet transform for joint time frequency analysis. Again, the question of "real time" comes up. How many samples do I need to reliable compute the wavelet (or fourier) coefficients so I could get a good view of the energy contained in this signal.
Can anyone who is knowledgeable on this topic please elaborate how when and under what condition do you compute "features" or perform frequency domain analysis for a real time system.
Thanks!