Digital Signal Processing (DSP)

Digital signal processing (DSP) is concerned with the representation of discrete time signals by a sequence of numbers or symbols and the processing of these signals. Digital signal processing and analog signal processing are subfields of signal processing. DSP includes subfields like: audio and speech signal processing, sonar and radar signal processing, sensor array processing, spectral estimation, statistical signal processing, digital image processing, signal processing for communications, control of systems, biomedical signal processing, seismic data processing, etc.

The goal of DSP is usually to measure, filter and/or compress continuous real-world analog signals. The first step is usually to convert the signal from an analog to a digital form, by sampling it using an analog-to-digital converter (ADC), which turns the analog signal into a stream of numbers. However, often, the required output signal is another analog output signal, which requires a digital-to-analog converter (DAC). 

Even if this process is more complex than analog processing and has a discrete value range, the application of computational power to digital signal processing allows for many advantages over analog processing in many applications, such as error detection and correction in transmission as well as data compression.

Depending on the requirements of the application, digital signal processing tasks can be implemented on general purpose computers (e.g. super computers, mainframe computers, or personal computers) or with embedded processors that may or may not include specialized microprocessors call digital signal processors.