IDL and Signal Processing

This chapter introduces you to IDL's digital signal processing tools. First, we introduce some basic signal processing concepts such as removing noise, curve fitting, correlation, and transforms. Then we discuss the process of creating a data set and adding noise to appear like raw data. We use that "noisy" data set to understand different methods of removing noise. Finally, we view an existing data set consisting of damped sine wave data with severe high-frequency noise.

Most of the procedures and functions mentioned here work in two or more dimensions. For simplicity, only one-dimensional signals are used in the examples.

Using just a few IDL commands, you can perform some complex and powerful signal processing tasks. IDL has many more signal processing abilities than the ones shown in this chapter. To take advantage of all of IDL's powerful capabilities, look for more information in Signal Processing.