Chapter 1 – Digital Signal Processing

Publisher Summary This chapter establishes the merits of digital signal processing (DSP) and identifies its abound applications. The term DSP generally refers to the use of digital computers to process signals. Normally, these signals can be handled by analog processes, but, for a variety of reasons, it may be preferred to handle them digitally. Signals stored digitally are large arrays of numbers. As such, they are immune to the physical limitations of analog signals. Once the signals have been converted to digital numbers, it is a straightforward process to program a computer to perform the filtering. DSP can allow large bandwidth signals to be sent over narrow bandwidth channels. Communications security can be greatly improved through DSP. Digitally processing a signal allows doing things with signals that would have been either difficult or impossible with analog approaches. With modern components and techniques, these advantages can often be realized economically and efficiently.