# Help with Time shifting a discrete signal

I have the following problem statement which I have no idea how to approach,

I have a IR depth sensor, that produces a distribution for it's depth value. So it kind of looks something like this:

As you can see, it shows that there are two possibilities, one at 10 and one at 20. Taking the expectation of this will give me the real depth.

What i want to do is apply some signal processing to model the motion of this camera in the Z axis. Basically i want it to shift say 5m and spread out to represent the increasing uncertainity. Hopefully to look something like this

I guess for the spreading out part, applying a 1D gaussian convolution would work, but i am not sure about the timeshifting part. Can i convolve the signal below with another signal to actual timeshift it somehow?

yes, you can convolve with $$\delta[n - n_o]$$ to delay your signal by $$n_o$$ samples.

I am guessing you know how to represent $$\delta[n]$$ in MATLAB. And for spreading the signal, you can do by time scaling as $$x_{spread}[n] = x[\frac{n}{M}]$$. So, basically, the overall operation becomes:$$x_{final}[n] = x[\frac{n}{M} - n_o]$$

In MATLAB you can simulate this by following code:

x = sin(2*pi*(0:0.01:1));
y = sin(2*pi*(0-0.1:0.005:1-0.1));
plot(x);hold on;plot(y);


Here, time-spread is by a factor of $$2$$ after shifting the signal by $$10$$ samples.

• this only works for sin/cos waves right, and not arbitary signals? – raaj Apr 23 at 19:40
• @raaj Why do you think so? It will work for all arbitrary input. – DSP Rookie Apr 23 at 19:41
• oh ok. are you able to provide a matlab code example that shows the convolution with 𝛿[𝑛−𝑛𝑜] t? – raaj Apr 23 at 19:41
• @raaj Create a vector of zeros of length equal to length of input, and then replace 0 by a 1 at the position by which you want to delay the input. When you convolve with this, it will represent convolving time delay $\delta[n]$. – DSP Rookie Apr 23 at 19:44
• another question..what if my original distribution was quantized only by 64 depth values. But i want to shift it by 1/2 a depth value. Is this actually feasable without upscaling the original distribution? – raaj Apr 23 at 20:19

This requires a system with an LTI response like $$\delta (n - N_o)$$ combined with scaling. You would also want to model the spread as a function of the displacement along the z axis I suppose, so for ex: if the displacement along Z axis is $$N_o$$ samples then the spread should be given a function $$f(N_o)$$.

A good approximation rule would be $$f(N_o) =\sigma \sqrt{\frac{N_o}{M\sigma^2}}\tag{ standard deviation of shifted gaussian}$$ That means as the distance increases relative to variance of the original gaussian the standard deviation of new gaussian increases with the above relation. So when $$N_o = M\sigma^2$$ the standard deviation of new gaussian is increased by $$\sigma$$.

The parameter $$M$$ would depend on the problem and the specific requirements of the system modelling.

• where did you get that equation for the SD of the shifted gaussian? – raaj Apr 23 at 20:16
• So just to be clear, say if my signal actually is univariate gaussian with a sigma of say 0.5. And i want it to spread to a sigma of 1.0, What kind of kernel should i be generating to convolve with? – raaj Apr 23 at 20:43
• @raaj Convolution of two gaussian with variance $\sigma_1^2$ and $\sigma_2^2$ gives a gausian with variance $\sigma_1^2 + \sigma_2^2$, you can do the math now. I have given you the above formula because I thought it makes sense to change the variance as a function of distance on z axis – Dsp guy sam Apr 23 at 20:54
• Use a gausian kernel with the variance as I defined in my answer and convolve this delayed gausian with the original signal...you have the required output – Dsp guy sam Apr 23 at 20:59