Discrete signals can be generated by software or obtained from real world through ADC. Discrete signals are sampled from analog signals. So you get samples in fixed time intervals. Discrete signal is as sequence of numbers. The element number n of sequence is marked as x(n). The most common number rows:
Unit sample sequence
d[n] = 1, if n=0 d[n] = 0, otherwise
You can describe it in Matlab like
% Plot an unit impulse signal
n = -5:5;
x = 0*n;
index=find(n==0);
x(index)=1;
% plot
stem(n, x);
axis([-inf, inf, -0.2, 1.2]);
xlabel('n');
ylabel('x');
title('Unit Impulse Signal delta[n]');
Unit Step Sequence
u[n] = 1, if n>=0 u[n] = 0, otherwise
You can describe it in Matlab like:
% Plot an unit impulse signal
n = -5:5;
x = 0*n;
index=find(n>=0);
x(index)=1;
% plot
stem(n, x);
axis([-inf, inf, -0.2, 1.2]);
xlabel('n');
ylabel('x');
title('Unit Step Signal u[n]');
As you can see step is nothing more than set of impulses. And impulse can be expressed as d[n]=u(n)-u(n-1); Thus any sequence of numbers can be expressed asset of impulses like this:
For example sin() sequence can be written like this:
Matlab script would look like this:
% Plot a sinusoidal signal
n = 0:40;
omega=0.3;
x = sin(omega*n);
% plot
stem(n, x);
axis([-inf, inf, -1.2, 1.2]);
xlabel('n');
ylabel('x');
title('sin[\omega n]');
And it would look like:
So it is nothing more than multiplication of queues.
