SAMPLING, ALIASING,

QUANTIZATION, AND CODING

Digital Signal Processing

Engr. Jerry V. Turingan
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 ANALOG TO DIGITAL CONVERSION

THREE-STEP PROCESS

SAMPLING

QUANTIZATION

CODING

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 Sampling
Consider an analogue signal x(t) that can be viewed as a continuous function
of time, as shown below.

We can represent this signal as a discrete time signal by using values of x(t)
at intervals of nTs to form x[n] as shown. We are "grabbing" points from
the function x(t) at regular intervals of time, Ts , called the sampling
period.

It is usual to specify a sampling rate or frequency fs rather than the sampling

period. The frequency is given by fs = 1/Ts, where fs is in Hertz. If the
sampling rate were high enough, then the signal x(t) could be constructed
from x[n] by simply joining the points by small linear portions. This
approximates to the analogue signal.
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 NYQUIST SAMPLING THEOREM

The Nyquist Sampling Theorem states that to

avoid aliasing occuring in the sampling of a
signal the sampling rate should be greater
than or equal to twice the highest frequency
component of interest present in the signal.
This is referred to as the Nyquist sampling rate.

fs ≥ 2Fmax

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 ALIASING
Aliasing due to unwanted, spurious out-of-band signals is a problem
in many applications that use A/D converters.
•These signals, if not filtered properly, can seriously impact the
performance of a data conversion system.
•If a signal is sampled at a sampling rate smaller than twice the
folding frequency, false lower frequency component(s)
appears in the sampled data. This phenomenon is called
Aliasing.
•Hence if the signal is not sampled often enough, information is
irretrievably lost.
•The signal must be sampled at a rate greater than twice the
highest frequency component of interest; otherwise, the high-
frequency content will alias at a frequency inside the spectrum
of interest (passband).

Alias frequency is the absolute value of the difference between the

frequency of the input signal and the closest integer multiple of the
sampling rate.
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REFERENCES

Proakis & Manolakis, Digital Signal

Processing: Principles, Algorithms, and
Applications 3e, Prentice-Hall, 1996

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