Sensors, Signals, and Sampling

Dear Colleagues,

Sensors and signal processing are of great importance in any technical system. At present, in our highly computerized world, they smartly connect two worlds: the world of digital techniques and technology with the world of sensors. In their interconnections and ‘entanglements’ of various types, sensors are assumed to be the elements which produce signals or convert signals into physical quantities, but the task of signal processing is just to process and/or convert the former ones. So, with this understanding, the signals play the role of an interface. Further, they are customarily assumed to be analog ones that need to be sampled before their digital processing.

Recently, the Guest Editor of this Special Issue has shown in a series of papers published elsewhere that there are still open problems (many of them of fundamental nature) in the area of sensors, signals, sampling operation, and interconnections between them. In fact, he has barely touched on some issues not yet satisfactorily solved or not considered at all. All of them need, in his opinion, further development, discussions, and investigations. Let this Special Issue be a forum for researchers who are interested in performing the tasks mentioned above, exchanging ideas with respect to possible solutions and their interpretations, and presenting new points of view. Let it also be a forum for cooperation on topics related to the interplay of sensors, signals, and sampling—to achieve research results jointly, and to publish them here.

In today’s world, systems are very often equipped with numerous sensors, and they are organized in networks (i.e., sensor networks). So, the transmission aspects of interrelations between sensors, signals, and sampling operations in a given system must be also taken into account. Further, signals registered by sensors are assumed in most cases to be analog. That is, they are perceived as functions of a continuous time. However, they are usually processed digitally, which requires their conversion to a digital form. On the other hand, all the transmission media are analog, and therefore the transmitted signal must match their analog properties. So, sometimes conversions from analog to digital and vice versa occur several times in a system. Obviously, this suggests the importance of the operations of signal sampling and its recovery for highly computerized sensor networks. Therefore, one of the aims of this Special Issue is to provide an overview of these topics in the aforementioned area which are still not solved satisfactory, and which probably need some new ideas. We are going to recognize them and find new solutions.     

At present, sensors and signals are inherently connected, as already mentioned, with a digital signal processing that is often mixed with an analog one as, for example, in case of sensor systems and networks. In general, this not only means algorithms and software. It also means digital hardware, signal processors, and other types of electronic devices (e.g., the so-called Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs)), which are programmed. All these electrical and electronic units need software for their operation. To this should also be added various types of hardware and software interfaces, such as those performing and/or supporting signal conversions (e.g., analog/digital and digital/analog converters) as well as format translations.

Modern sensor systems and networks cannot go without signal processing, and without its hardware and software. Further, the specificity of these systems often requires unconventional solutions, nonstandard hardware, algorithms, and software. In this Special Issue of Sensors, we aim to present the newest achievements, proposals, ideas, theories that have recently emerged the topics discussed above. All the papers not published up to now, which present novel and unconventional results achieved in the areas of sensors, signals, and signal processing, and which are dedicated to sensor systems and networks, are welcome here; we invite potential authors to submit their manuscripts to this Special Issue.

I strongly believe that this Special Issue will be our common success, and that the themes addressed within it will be further developed in the forthcoming issues of Sensors. Further, we also aim to be active in developing new theoretical branches of signal processing, such as signal sampling which does not use descriptions based on Dirac impulse formalism, measuring processes and their relationships with signal sampling, the application of Kronecker functions, functions with attributes, and other emerging topics.

Prof. Dr. Andrzej Borys
Guest Editor

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