Blog

Declan O’Neill, Telecommunications Engineering undergraduate at the Dublin Institute of Technology

If you were asked the meaning of the term “signal processing,” how would you respond? I'm sure you could easily explain what processing means, but what's a signal? A signal is anything we can sense, be it a sight, a sound, the heat felt from a warm object or a draft felt rolling through a room. It could even be the shudder felt through the floor when a truck drives down your street. But when we talk about signal processing, what do we mean and where can we see it? Could we reasonably call it “the science behind our digital life?” The short answer is yes, but why?

Pete Wyckoff, Signal Processing Consultant & IEEE Member

In 1982, E.T. was stranded on Earth and his fate depended upon phoning home using a Texas Instruments Speak & Spell – a child’s toy – precariously wired to a Columbian coffee can and a dingy turntable record player, which appeared to be playing a circular saw rather than an actual record. The Speak & Spell was a contemporary marvel built upon years of engineering research into speech synthesis. Computers could talk to us in 1982; nonetheless phoning a distant galaxy with such a makeshift contraption presented a few obstacles. Although challenges prevail – for good reasons – signal processing and systems engineering help to overcome many of the barriers.