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How to Shift a Signal in Time Domain

Understand how to shift discrete-time signals in the time domain by delaying or advancing them. This lesson helps you grasp the fundamentals of signal alignment used in many DSP operations, such as filtering and localization, enabling better signal processing and analysis.

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When learning DSP, it’s important to know how to shift a signal in time. This is an important part of all DSP operations.

  • Some applications require signals to be shifted by a processor. For example, a signal needs to be aligned with the output of another signal processing chain.
  • In some other applications, we encounter a signal shifted in time by nature. For example, a localization receiver attempts to estimate the time shift of the received signal to compute its range from the transmitter.
  • In almost all DSP operations, like filtering, a signal needs to be shifted in time to compute the output response of the system.

The logic

For a discrete-time signal x[n]x[n], its delayed version by mm units is denoted by x[nm]x[n-m]. Taking the time nn ...