Lecture 7: Sampling Thorem
Due to the increased use of computers in all engineering applications, including signal processing, it is important to spend some more time examining issues of sampling. In this chapter we will look at sampling both in the time domain and the frequency domain.
We have already encountered the sampling theorem and, arguing purely from a trigonometric-identity point of view, have established the Nyquist sampling criterion for sinusoidal signals. However, we have not fully addressed the sampling of more general signals, nor provided a general proof. Nor have we indicated how to reconstruct a signal from its samples. With the tools of Fourier transforms and Fourier series available to us we are now ready to finish the job that was started months ago.
To begin with, suppose we have a signal
which
we wish to sample. Let us suppose further that the signal is bandlimited
to
Hz.
This means that its Fourier transform is nonzero for
< \omega < 2\pi B$" align="middle" border="0" height="30" width="129" />.
Plot spectrum.
We will model the sampling process as multiplication of
by
the ``picket fence'' function

We encountered this periodic function when we studied Fourier series. Recall that by its Fourier series representation we can write

where
2B$" align="middle" border="0" height="30" width="60" />, or
equivalently,
4\pi B$" align="middle" border="0" height="30" width="71" />.
The sampled output is denoted as
, where
Using the F.S. representation we get

Now lets look at the spectrum of the transformed signal. Using the convolution property,

Plot the spectrum of the sampled signal with both
- The spectrum is periodic, with period
, because of the
multiple copies of the spectrum. - The spectrum is scaled down by a factor of
. - Note that in this case there is no overlap between the images of the spectrum.
Now consider the effect of reducing the sampling rate to
< 2B$" align="middle" border="0" height="30" width="60" />.
In this case, the duplicates of the spectrum overlap each other. The
overlap of the spectrum is aliasing.
This demonstration more-or-less proves the sampling theorem for
general signals. Provided that we sample fast enough, the signal
spectrum is not distorted by the sampling process. If we don't sample
fast enough, there will be distortion. The next question is: given a
set of samples, how do we get the signal back? From the spectrum, the
answer is to filter the signal with a lowpass filter with cutoff
. This cuts out the images and leaves us with the
original spectrum. This is a sort of idealized point of view, because
it assumes that we are filtering a continuous-time function
, which is a sequence of weighted delta functions. In
practice, we have numbers
representing the value of the
function
. How can we recover the time
function from this?
2B$" align="middle" border="0" height="30" width="60" />. The recovery formula is

where

We will prove this theorem. Because we are actually lacking a few theoretical tools, it will take a bit of work. What makes this interesting is we will end up using in a very essential way most of the transform ideas we have talked about.
- The first step is to notice that the spectrum of the sampled
signal,

is periodic and hence has a Fourier series. The period of the function in frequency is
, and the fundamental frequency is

By the F.S. we can write

where the
are the F.S. coefficients

But the integral is just the inverse F.T., evaluated at
:

so

- Let
. Then

- Let

We will show that
by showing that
. We can compute the F.T. of
using linearity and the
shifting property:

Observe that the summation on the right is the same as the F.S. we derived in step 1:

Now substituting in the spectrum of the sampled signal (derived above)

since
is bandlimited to
< \omega < \pi f_s$" align="middle" border="0" height="30" width="117" /> or
< f < f_s/2$" align="middle" border="0" height="32" width="128" />.
Notice that the reconstruction filter is based upon a sinc function, whose transform is a rect function: we are really just doing the filtering implied by our initial intuition.
In practice, of course, we want to sample at a frequency higher than just twice the bandwidth to allow room for filter rolloff.







