Abstract

Signal processing is an interdisciplinary subject which has application in almost all scientific fields. There are mainly two sub-fields to signal processing: (i) Analog signal processing, and (ii) Digital signal processing. Analog signal (continuous in time and amplitude) processing is the processing performed on continuous analog signals to extract various types of information from the signal. Typical examples which uses analog signal processing include crossover filters in loudspeakers, 'Bass', 'Treble' and 'Volume' controls on stereos, old televisions, old radios, audio tapes, old land-line telephones, video cassette recorders, etc. Digital signal (discrete in time and amplitude) processing, on the other hand, is the use of digital processing on signals to perform a wide variety of signal processing operations by computers or more specialized digital signal processors to extract the relevant information. Digital signal processing applications include audio and speech processing, sonar, radar and other sensor array processing, spectral density estimation, statistical signal processing, digital image processing, data/image compression, video/audio coding, signal processing for telecommunications, control systems, biomedical engineering, and seismology, etc. to list a few.