Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering

Signals and Systems

Denition of a signal Kinds of signals Signals and information Systems Fundamental model of communication

Whats a Signal?
Denition: A signal is a function.

Electrical Signals
Electrical signalsvoltages, currents, electromagnetic wavescarry two different quantities Power Information

Kinds of Signals
Analog signal: function of a continuous variable
s(t) = A sin(2 f0 t + )

Amplitude
0.5

Frequency Speech

Phase

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1
Amplitude

-0.1

-0.2

-0.3

-0.4

-0.5

Kinds of Signals
Digital signal: function of the integers
84 104 105 115 32 116 101 120 116 32 105 115 32 97 32 100 105 103 105 116 97 108 32 115 105 103 110 97 108 46
120

"This text is a digital signal."

100

80

60

40

20

10

15

20

25

30

Index

This text is a digital signal.

Kinds of Signals
Images: s(x, y )

r(x, y, t) Video: s(x, y, t) = g (x, y, t) b(x, y, t)

does not exist without a signal Information representing it encoded in a signal by modifying the Information signals structure
s(t) = A sin(2 f0 t + )

Wheres the Information?

operate on signals to produce a modied Systems signal and to extract information

x(t) System y(t)

Fundamental Model of Communication

m(t) Source Transmitter x(t) Channel r(t) Receiver m(t) Sink

received signal message signal (corrupted modulated message) transmitted signal demodulated (modulated message) message