envelopedetected

Envelopedetected is a term used in signal processing to describe the act or result of extracting the envelope of a signal. The word blends envelope, the slowly varying amplitude of a carrier, with detected, indicating that the envelope has been isolated from the carrier. In practice, envelopedetected can refer to either the process of envelope detection or to data and features that have undergone such processing. The term functions as a conceptual label rather than a fixed technical standard.

Usage of the term is informal and relatively new; it appears in some algorithm descriptions, educational materials, and discussions of envelope-based processing where the envelope is the primary signal of interest. In communications, envelope detection is a foundational technique for demodulating amplitude-modulated signals; when a system is described as envelopedetected, it often implies that downstream steps rely on the extracted amplitude envelope rather than the original modulated waveform.

Common methods to obtain an envelope include analog approaches using diode detectors and RC filters, as well as digital approaches such as rectification followed by low-pass filtering, or computation of the envelope via the Hilbert transform or magnitude of an analytic signal. Envelopedetected outputs are used in applications such as AM demodulation, envelope-tracking power amplifiers, and envelope-based feature extraction in audio, biomedical, and vibration sensing.

Limitations include sensitivity to noise, distortion of rapid envelope changes, and loss of phase information. See also envelope detector, amplitude modulation, Hilbert transform.