Editing Sampling (signal processing) (section)

{{Short description|Measurement of a signal at discrete time intervals}}
{{Other uses|Sampling (disambiguation)}}

[[Image:Signal Sampling.svg|thumb|300px|Signal sampling representation. The continuous signal ''S''(''t'') is represented with a green colored line while the discrete samples are indicated by the blue vertical lines.]]

In [[signal processing]], '''sampling''' is the reduction of a [[continuous-time signal]] to a [[discrete-time signal]]. A common example is the conversion of a [[sound wave]] to a sequence of "samples".
A '''sample''' is a value of the [[signal]] at a point in time and/or space; this definition differs from [[Sampling (statistics)|the term's usage in statistics]], which refers to a set of such values.{{efn-ua|For example, "number of samples" in signal processing is roughly equivalent to "[[sample size]]" in statistics.}}

A '''sampler''' is a subsystem or operation that extracts samples from a [[continuous signal]]. A theoretical '''ideal sampler''' produces samples equivalent to the instantaneous value of the continuous signal at the desired points.

The original signal can be reconstructed from a sequence of samples, up to the [[Nyquist limit]], by passing the sequence of samples through a [[reconstruction filter]].