A signal as referred to in communication systems, signal processing, and electri

cal engineering is a function that "conveys information about the behavior or at

tributes of some phenomenon".[1] In the physical world, any quantity exhibiting
variation in time or variation in space (such as an image) is potentially a sign
al that might provide information on the status of a physical system, or convey
a message between observers, among other possibilities.[2] The IEEE Transactions
on Signal Processing states that the term "signal" includes audio, video, speec
h, image, communication, geophysical, sonar, radar, medical and musical signals.
[3]
In nature, signals can take the form of any action by one organism able to be pe
rceived by other organisms, ranging from the release of chemicals by plants to a
lert nearby plants of the same type of a predator, to sounds or motions made by
animals to alert other animals of the presence of danger or of food. Signaling o
ccurs in organisms all the way down to the cellular level, with cell signaling.
Signaling theory, in evolutionary biology, proposes that a substantial driver fo
r evolution is the ability for animals to communicate with each other by develop
ing ways of signaling. In human engineering, signals are typically provided by a
sensor, and often the original form of a signal is converted to another form of
energy using a transducer. For example, a microphone converts an acoustic signa
l to a voltage waveform, and a speaker does the reverse.[1]
The formal study of the information content of signals is the field of informati
on theory. The information in a signal is usually accompanied by noise. The term
noise usually means an undesirable random disturbance, but is often extended to
include unwanted signals conflicting with the desired signal (such as crosstalk
). The prevention of noise is covered in part under the heading of signal integr
ity. The separation of desired signals from a background is the field of signal
recovery,[4] one branch of which is estimation theory, a probabilistic approach
to suppressing random disturbances.
Engineering disciplines such as electrical engineering have led the way in the d
esign, study, and implementation of systems involving transmission, storage, and
manipulation of information. In the latter half of the 20th century, electrical
engineering itself separated into several disciplines, specialising in the desi
gn and analysis of systems that manipulate physical signals; electronic engineer
ing and computer engineering as examples; while design engineering developed to
deal with functional design of man machine interfaces.
Contents [hide]
1 Definitions
2 Analog and digital signals
2.1 Analog signal
2.2 Digital signal
2.3 Time discretization
2.4 Amplitude quantization
3 Examples of signals
4 Signal processing
5 Signals and systems
6 See also
7 References
8 Further reading
Definitions[edit]
Definitions specific to sub-fields are common. For example, in information theor
y, a signal is a codified message, that is, the sequence of states in a communic
ation channel that encodes a message.
In the context of signal processing, arbitrary binary data streams are not consi
dered as signals, but only analog and digital signals that are representations o
f analog physical quantities.
In a communication system, a transmitter encodes a message to a signal, which is
carried to a receiver by the communications channel. For example, the words "Ma
ry had a little lamb" might be the message spoken into a telephone. The telephon
e transmitter converts the sounds into an electrical voltage signal. The signal
is transmitted to the receiving telephone by wires; at the receiver it is reconv
erted into sounds.
In telephone networks, signalling, for example common-channel signaling, refers
to phone number and other digital control information rather than the actual voi
ce signal.
Signals can be categorized in various ways. The most common distinction is betwe
en discrete and continuous spaces that the functions are defined over, for examp
le discrete and continuous time domains. Discrete-time signals are often referre
d to as time series in other fields. Continuous-time signals are often referred
to as continuous signals even when the signal functions are not continuous; an e
xample is a square-wave signal.
A second important distinction is between discrete-valued and continuous-valued.
Particularly in digital signal processing a digital signal is sometimes defined
as a sequence of discrete values, that may or may not be derived from an underl
ying continuous-valued physical process. In other contexts, digital signals are
defined as the continuous-time waveform signals in a digital system, representin
g a bit-stream. In the first case, a signal that is generated by means of a digi
tal modulation method is considered as converted to an analog signal, while it i
s considered as a digital signal in the second case.
Another important property of a signal (actually, of a statistically defined cla
ss of signals) is its entropy or information content.
Analog and digital signals[edit]
A digital signal has two or more distinguishable waveforms, in this example, hig
h voltage and low voltages, each of which can be mapped onto a digit. Characteri
stically, noise can be removed from digital signals provided it is not too large
.
Two main types of signals encountered in practice are analog and digital. The fi
gure shows a digital signal that results from approximating an analog signal by
its values at particular time instants. Digital signals are quantized, while ana
log signals are continuous.
Analog signal[edit]
Main article: Analog signal
An analog signal is any continuous signal for which the time varying feature (va
riable) of the signal is a representation of some other time varying quantity, i
.e., analogous to another time varying signal. For example, in an analog audio s
ignal, the instantaneous voltage of the signal varies continuously with the pres
sure of the sound waves. It differs from a digital signal, in which the continuo
us quantity is a representation of a sequence of discrete values which can only
take on one of a finite number of values.[5][6] The term analog signal usually r
efers to electrical signals; however, mechanical, pneumatic, hydraulic, human sp
eech, and other systems may also convey or be considered analog signals.
An analog signal uses some property of the medium to convey the signal's informa
tion. For example, an aneroid barometer uses rotary position as the signal to co
nvey pressure information. In an electrical signal, the voltage, current, or fre
quency of the signal may be varied to represent the information.
Any information may be conveyed by an analog signal; often such a signal is a me
asured response to changes in physical phenomena, such as sound, light, temperat
ure, position, or pressure. The physical variable is converted to an analog sign
al by a transducer. For example, in sound recording, fluctuations in air pressur
e (that is to say, sound) strike the diaphragm of a microphone which induces cor
responding fluctuations in the current produced by a coil in an electromagnetic
microphone, or the voltage produced by a condenser microphone. The voltage or th
e current is said to be an "analog" of the sound.
Digital signal[edit]
Main article: Digital signal
A binary signal, also known as a logic signal, is a digital signal with two dist
inguishable levels
A digital signal is a signal that is constructed from a discrete set of waveform
s of a physical quantity so as to represent a sequence of discrete values.[7][8]
[9] A logic signal is a digital signal with only two possible values,[10][11] an
d describes an arbitrary bit stream. Other types of digital signals can represen
t three-valued logic or higher valued logics.
Alternatively, a digital signal may be considered to be the sequence of codes re
presented by such a physical quantity.[12] The physical quantity may be a variab
le electric current or voltage, the intensity, phase or polarization of an optic
al or other electromagnetic field, acoustic pressure, the magnetization of a mag
netic storage media, etcetera. Digital signals are present in all digital electr
onics, notably computing equipment and data transmission.
A received digital signal may be impaired by noise and distortions without neces
sarily affecting the digits
With digital signals, system noise, provided it is not too great, will not affec
t system operation whereas noise always degrades the operation of analog signals
to some degree.
Digital signals often arise via sampling of analog signals, for example, a conti
nually fluctuating voltage on a line that can be digitized by an analog-to-digit
al converter circuit, wherein the circuit will read the voltage level on the lin
e, say, every 50 microseconds and represent each reading with a fixed number of
bits. The resulting stream of numbers is stored as digital data on a discrete-ti
me and quantized-amplitude signal. Computers and other digital devices are restr
icted to discrete time.