# All Questions

1,786 questions
20k views

### Why is it a bad idea to filter by zeroing out FFT bins?

It's very easy to filter a signal by performing an FFT on it, zeroing out some of the bins, and then performing an IFFT. For instance: ...
59k views

### What does frequency domain denote in case of images?

I was just learning about the frequency domain in images. I can understand the frequency spectrum in case of waves. It denotes what frequencies are present in a wave. If we draw the frequency ...
47k views

### Understanding the Matched Filter

I have a question about matched filtering. Does the matched filter maximise the SNR at the moment of decision only? As far as I understand, if you put, say, NRZ through a matched filter, the SNR ...
134k views

### Why should I zero-pad a signal before taking the Fourier transform?

In an answer to a previous question, it was stated that one should zero-pad the input signals (add zeros to the end so that at least half of the wave is "blank") What's the reason for this?
57k views

### Variance of White Gaussian Noise

It could seem an easy question and without any doubts it is but I'm trying to calculate the variance of white Gaussian noise without any result. The power spectral density (PSD) of additive white ...
905 views

15k views

### What Resources Are Recommended for an Introduction to Signal Processing (DSP)?

What are some recommended resources (books, tutorials, lectures, etc.) on digital signal processing, and how to begin working with it on a technical level?
46k views

### Kalman filter for position and velocity: introducing speed estimates

Thanks to everyone who posted comments/answers to my query yesterday (Implementing a Kalman filter for position, velocity, acceleration ). I've been looking at what was recommended, and in particular ...
13k views

### Flipping the impulse response in convolution

During convolution on a signal, why do we need to flip the impulse response during the process?
22k views

### How many taps does an FIR filter need?

I am looking to design a set of FIR filters to implement a low pass filter. I am also trying to reduce the latency of the signal through the filter so I am wondering what the minimum number of taps I ...
3k views

### About Discrete Fourier Transform vs. Discrete Fourier Series

I am new to the field of signal processing. I am wondering what is the difference between DFS(Fourier Series) vs. DFT(Fourier Transform). For common applications, usually we get a segment(length <...
25k views

### Why so many methods of computing PSD?

Welch's method has been my go-to algorithm for computing power spectral density (PSD) of evenly-sampled timeseries. I noticed that there are many other methods for computing PSD. For example, in ...
25k views

### How do I manually plot the frequency response of a bandpass Butterworth filter in MATLAB without freqz function?

I have code like below that applies a bandpass filter onto a signal. I am quite a noob at DSP and I want to understand what is going on behind the scenes before I proceed. To do this, I want to know ...
54k views

### Why is the FFT “mirrored”?

If you do an FFT plot of a simple signal, like: t = 0:0.01:1 ; N = max(size(t)); x = 1 + sin( 2*pi*t ) ; y = abs( fft( x ) ) ; stem( N*t, y ) 1Hz sinusoid + DC ...
5k views

### Frequency shifting of a quadrature mixed signal

I've a quadrature mixed signal with 10 MHz as highest frequency available. I want to shift it to any frequency lesser than 10 MHz. I should get it by multiplying this signal by cosine of the required ...
122k views

### Why is the Fourier transform so important?

Everyone discusses the Fourier transform when discussing signal processing. Why is it so important to signal processing and what does it tell us about the signal? Does it only apply to digital signal ...
66k views

### What is the physical significance of negative frequencies?

This has been one of the holes in my cheddar cheese block of understanding DSP, so what is the physical interpretation of having a negative frequency? If you have a physical tone at some frequency ...
7k views

### Does the autocorrelation function completely describe a stochastic process?

Is a stochastic process completely described by its autocorrelation function? If not, which additional properties would be needed?
8k views

### How to implement a digital oscillator?

I have a floating-point digital signal processing system that operates at a fixed sample rate of $f_s = 32768$ samples per second implemented using an x86-64 processor. Assuming that the DSP system ...
19k views

### I and Q components and the difference between QPSK and 4QAM

Both 4QAM and QPSK apparently produce the same waveform, but are they the same mathematically? In a QPSK constellation, are the mapping points at 45, 135, 225 and 315 degrees while the 4QAM is at 0, ...
8k views