Quantization of noisy signals

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to attempt to promote the recognition of a phenomen which occures in digitizers used to digitally record or digintally transmit noisy analog signals, i.e. to record or transmit signal plus noise rather than pure signal. We are concerned with situations where integrity of the signal is important, but not the integrity of the noise. The phenomena is easily analyzed and understood using elementary concepts from probablity theory, but does not appear to be widely recognized. We will give specific example in seismic signal processing where this behavior predominates.