Nyquist frequency in the context of "Comparison of analog and digital recording"

An analog signal (American English) or analogue signal (British and Commonwealth English) is any signal, typically a continuous-time signal, representing some other quantity, i.e., analogous to another quantity. For example, in an analog audio signal, the instantaneous signal voltage varies in a manner analogous to the pressure of the sound waves.

In contrast, a digital signal represents the original time-varying quantity as a sampled sequence of quantized numeric values, typically but not necessarily in the form of a binary value. Digital sampling imposes some bandwidth and dynamic range constraints on the representation and adds quantization noise.

In signal processing and related disciplines, aliasing is a phenomenon that a reconstructed signal from samples of the original signal contains low frequency components that are not present in the original one. This is caused when, in the original signal, there are components at frequency exceeding a certain frequency called Nyquist frequency, ${\textstyle f_{s}/2}$, where ${\textstyle f_{s}}$ is the sampling frequency (undersampling). This is because typical reconstruction methods use low frequency components while there are a number of frequency components, called aliases, which sampling result in the identical sample. It also often refers to the distortion or artifact that results when a signal reconstructed from samples is different from the original continuous signal.

Aliasing can occur in signals sampled in time, for instance in digital audio or the stroboscopic effect, and is referred to as temporal aliasing. Aliasing in spatially sampled signals (e.g., moiré patterns in digital images) is referred to as spatial aliasing.

In signal processing, the Nyquist rate, named after Harry Nyquist, is a value equal to twice the highest frequency (bandwidth) of a given function or signal. It has units of samples per unit time, conventionally expressed as samples per second, or hertz (Hz). When the signal is sampled at a higher sample rate (see § Critical frequency), the resulting discrete-time sequence is said to be free of the distortion known as aliasing. Conversely, for a given sample rate the corresponding Nyquist frequency is one-half the sample rate. Note that the Nyquist rate is a property of a continuous-time signal, whereas Nyquist frequency is a property of a discrete-time system.

The term Nyquist rate is also used in a different context with units of symbols per second, which is actually the field in which Harry Nyquist was working. In that context it is an upper bound for the symbol rate across a bandwidth-limited baseband channel such as a telegraph line or passband channel such as a limited radio frequency band or a frequency division multiplex channel.