Originalsignals

Originalsignals is a term used in signal processing to refer to the raw signal as captured or observed before any processing, encoding, or transformation. The concept serves as a reference point for evaluating the effects of filters, compressors, encoders, and other system components. The term appears across domains such as audio, video, biomedical data, and sensor networks, though its exact definition varies by context.

In formal terms, if x(t) denotes a continuous-time original signal and x[n] denotes a sampled version, then a processing operation P yields a transformed signal y(t) or y[n]. The original signal is intended to preserve information content prior to loss or alteration introduced by processing. When reporting experiments, researchers may designate the original signal to enable reproducibility and direct comparison with downstream outputs.

Common uses include benchmarking the performance of signal-processing chains, validating models of channel effects, evaluating compression schemes, and facilitating source separation or reconstruction tasks that depend on knowledge of the unmodified input.

Practical considerations focus on measurement quality, sampling rate, and sensor characteristics. Noise, distortion, and aliasing can cause the observed original signal to differ from the true underlying phenomenon. Datasets that include an original signal are typically accompanied by metadata describing sampling parameters and acquisition conditions to support interpretation and replication.

See also: signal processing, time-domain signal, sampling theorem, and data provenance.