Signal sampling

With the increasing use of computers the usage of and need for digital signal processing has increased. In order to use an analog signal on a computer it must be digitized with an analog to digital converter (ADC). Sampling is usually carried out in two stages, discretization and quantization. In the discretization stage, the space of signals is partitioned into equivalence classes and quantization is carried out by replacing the signal with representative signal of the corresponding equivalence class. In the quantization stage the representative signal values are approximated by values from a finite set.

In order for a sampled analog signal to be exactly reconstructed, the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem must be satisfied. This theorem states that the sampling frequency must be greater than twice the bandwidth of the signal. In practice, the sampling frequency is often significantly more than twice the required bandwidth. The most common bandwidth scenarios are: DC - BWx (baseband); and Fc +/-BWx, a frequency band centered on a carrier frequency ("direct demodulation").

A digital to analog converter (DAC) is used to convert the digital signal back to analog. The use of a digital computer is a key ingredient in digital control systems.