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Introduction

Digital signal processing (DSP) is a field which is primarily technology driven. It started from around mid 1960s when digital computers and digital circuitry became fast enough to process large amounts of data efficiently.

When the term ‘digital’ is used, often it loosely refers to a finite set of distinct values. This is in contrast to ‘analog’, which refers to a continuous range of values. In digital signal processing we are concerned with the processing of signals which are discrete in time (sampled) and in most cases, discrete in amplitude (quantized) as well. In other words, we are primarily dealing with data sequences – sequences of numbers.

Such discrete (or digital) signals may arise in one of the following two distinct ...

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