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Fundamentals of Multimedia

Lecture 2 - DIGITAL DATA ACQUISITION

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Lecture Outlines

 ANALOG AND DIGITAL SIGNALS.

 ANALOG-TO-DIGITAL CONVERSION
 Sampling
 Quantization
 Bit Rate

 SAMPLING THEOREM AND ALIASING

 Aliasing in Spatial Domains
 Aliasing in the Temporal Domain
 Moiré Patterns and Aliasing

 FILTERING
 Filtering in 1D and 2D

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Analog and Digital Signals
The physical world around us exists in a continuous form.
 sensing light
 Sensing sound energy.
 Sensing pressure.
 Sensing temperature.
 Sensing motion.

 On the other hand, digital recording instruments attempts

to measure information in an electrical and digital form.
 We need a process of Analogue to Digital Conversion

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Analog and Digital Signals
 Analog signal: is a continuous signal that represents physical
measurements.
 Digital signals: are time separated signals which are generated
using digital modulation.
 It uses a continuous range of values that help you to represent information. Digital signal uses discrete 0
and 1 to represent information.

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Analog and Digital Signals

Advantages of digital signals over analog ones

 It is possible to create complex, interactive content.
 Stored digital signals do not degrade over time or distance as analog
signals do
 Digital data can be efficiently compressed and transmitted across digital
networks.
 It easy to store all types of digital media on a common storage medium.

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Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC)

 Special hardware devices : Analog-to-Digital converters.

 Take analog signals from analog sensor (e.g. microphone) and digitally
sample data.

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Digital-to-Analog Converter (DAC)

 Playback – a converse operation to Analog-to-Digital

 Takes digital signal, possible after modification by computer (e.g. volume

change, equalization)
 Outputs an analog signal that may be played by analog output device
(e.g. loudspeaker, CRT display)

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 Analog-to-Digital Conversion (ADC)

 The conversion of signals from analog to digital occurs via two main
processes: sampling and quantization.
 The reverse process of converting digital signals to analog is known as
interpolation.

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 Sampling

 Sampling basically involves:

Measuring the analog signal at regular
discrete intervals and Recording the
value at these points.

 If you reduce T (increase f ), the

number of samples increases; and
correspondingly, so does the storage
requirement, and Vice versa.
 T is clearly a critical parameter. Should
it be the same for every signal?

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Quantization

 Quantization deals with encoding the signal value at every sampled location
with a predefined precision, defined by a number of levels.

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Quantization

Ascending order x : -300 , -100 , 0 , 150 , 550 , 600 , 850 , 900

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝑹 = 𝐦𝐚𝐱 𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐞 − 𝐦𝐢𝐧 𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐞 = 900-(-300)= 1200
𝑅 1200
𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝒒𝒖𝒂𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒛𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒑 𝛿 = = = 300
𝑁 4

Level 0 Level 1 Level 2 Level 3

-300+300=0 0+300=300 300+300=600 600+300=900
-300→ 0 0→ 300 300→ 600 600→ 900
00 01 10 11

sequence 550 600 -100 150 -300 900 0 850

Level 10 11 00 01 00 11 00 11
The bit stream 1011000100110011

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 Quantization

Calculate the error

Level 0 Level 1 Level 2 Level 3
-300+300=0 0+300=300 300+300=600 600+300=900
-300→ 0 0→ 300 300→ 600 600→ 900
00 01 10 11

sequence 550 600 -100 150 -300 900 0 850

Level 10 11 00 01 00 11 00 11
300+600 600+900 −300+0 0+300 −300+0 600+900 −300+0 600+900
Average = = = = = = = =
2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
450 750 -150 150 -150 750 -150 750
Error for |550-450|= |600-750|= |-100+150|= |150-150|= |-300+150|= |900-750|= |0+150|= |850-750|=
each level 100 150 50 0 150 150 150 100
The error 100+150+50+0+150+150+150+100 =850

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Quantization

 How many bits should be used to represent each sample?

 Is this number the same for all signals?
 It actually depends on the type of signal and what its intended use is.
 For example, Audio signals which represent music, must be quantized on
16 bits, whereas speech only requires 8 bits.

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Bit Rate

 Bit rate is the number of bits produced per second. It is very important for
storage and distribution.

Examples

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Sampling theorem and Aliasing
 What is the rate at which sampling should occur?

 To determine the correct number of samples, you have

to calculate what is called Nyquist number and it is
twice the maximum frequency occurring in the signal. If
a signal has maximum frequency of 10KHZ, it should be
sampled at a frequency of 20KHZ.

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Sampling theorem and Aliasing
 What happened if your sampling frequency is higher than your
Nyquist frequency?
 The same analog signal will be reproduced, however unnecessary
samples will increase storage and transmission requirements.

 What happened if your sampling frequency is Lower than your

Nyquist frequency?
 Reproduced signal will differ from the original one because all the
frequency content is not well captured during the digitization process.
 This results in artifacts which is termed as aliasing. (used to describe
loss of information during digitization).

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 Aliasing
 Aliasing effect on 1D signal  Aliasing effect on 2D signal

 Aliasing in the Temporal Domain

 Motion of car wheels.
 Watching a helicopter blade.

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Moiré Patterns and Aliasing
What causes moire in photography?
Moiré pattern occurs when a scene or an object that is being
photographed contains fine, repetitive details that exceed
sensor resolution. As a result, the camera produces strange-
looking wavy patterns.

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 FILTERING

 From general point of view It is a methodology to keep some frequencies and

remove all other frequencies.
 Analog filter: uses analog electronic circuits made up from components such as
resistors, capacitors, and operational amplifiers to produce the required filtering
effect.
 Digital filter: uses digital numerical computations on sampled, quantized values of
the signal.

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 Filtering
Filters are classified into three categories according to their responses:
 Low-pass filters: remove high frequency content from the input signal and keeping
other content.
 High-pass filters: remove low frequency content from the input signal and keeping
other content.
 Band-pass filters: output signals containing the frequencies belonging to a defined
band.
Advantages of digital filters over analog filters
 A digital filter is programmable.
 Digital filters are easily designed, tested, and implemented on a general-purpose
computer or workstation.
 Digital filters can be combined in parallel or cascaded in series with relative ease by
imposing minimal software requirements.
 Analog filters are subject to drift and are dependent on temperature. Digital filters do
not suffer from these problems.
 Digital filters are more versatile in their ability to process signals in a variety of ways.
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Effect of Low- and
High-pass filters Noise Removal

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