windowed

Windowed is an adjective used across fields to describe something shaped or restricted by a window, typically a finite interval or region. In signal processing and related disciplines, a window function is applied to a finite portion of a signal to mitigate edge effects and reduce spectral leakage. The result is a windowed signal, obtained by multiplying the original data by the chosen window function within a specified interval.

Windowing attenuates discontinuities at the boundaries of the sample segment. The choice of window affects the trade-off between main-lobe width and side-lobe levels. Common window functions include rectangular (no window), Hann (Hanning), Hamming, Blackman, and Kaiser; each has different properties suitable for particular analyses. Windowed analysis is widely used in Fourier transforms, short-time Fourier transforms, and spectral estimation. In practice, a moving or sliding window may be applied to time-series data to obtain time-localized spectra or statistics.

In computing, windowed mode refers to a graphical user interface arrangement in which applications appear as overlapping, resizable windows within a desktop, as opposed to full-screen or single-task interfaces. This windowed paradigm supports multitasking and independent control of each application window.

Other uses include image processing and statistics, where windowing defines a local region of interest or moving window for localized computation. The term is often accompanied by the name of the window function or the window size, which determine the extent of the window and its effect on the results.