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Zero Padding
Zero padding consists of extending a signal (or spectrum)
with zeros. It maps a length
signal to a length
signal, but
need not divide
.
Definition:
![$\displaystyle \hbox{\sc ZeroPad}_{M,m}(x) \isdef \left\{\begin{array}{ll} x(m),...
...ert m\vert < N/2 \\ [5pt] 0, & \mbox{otherwise} \\ \end{array} \right. \protect$](http://www.dsprelated.com/josimages/mdft/img1218.png) |
(7.4) |
where

, with

for

odd,
and

for

even.
For example,
In this example, the first sample corresponds to time 0, and five
zeros have been inserted between the samples corresponding to times

and

.
Figure 7.7 illustrates zero padding from length
out to length
. Note that
and
could be replaced by
and
in the
figure caption.
Figure 7.7:
Illustration of zero padding:
a) Original signal (or spectrum)
plotted over the
domain
where
(i.e., as the samples would
normally be held in a computer array).
b)
.
c) The same signal
plotted over the domain
which
is more natural for interpreting negative times (frequencies).
d)
plotted over the zero-centered domain.
![\includegraphics[width=\twidth]{eps/zpad}](http://www.dsprelated.com/josimages/mdft/img1226.png) |
Note that we have unified the time-domain and frequency-domain
definitions of zero-padding by interpreting the original time axis
as indexing positive-time samples from 0 to
(for
even), and negative times in the interval
.7.8 Furthermore, we require
when
is even, while odd
requires no such
restriction. In practice, we often prefer to interpret time-domain
samples as extending from 0 to
, i.e., with no negative-time
samples. For this case, we define ``causal zero padding'' as
described below.
Previous:
Stretch OperatorNext:
Causal (Periodic) Signals
written by Julius Orion Smith III
Julius Smith's background is in electrical engineering (BS Rice 1975, PhD Stanford 1983). He is presently Professor of Music and Associate Professor (by courtesy) of Electrical Engineering at
Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), teaching courses and pursuing research related to signal processing applied to music and audio systems. See
http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/ for details.