New digital filter for the analysis of experimental data

Abstract

The extremely simple mathematical technique called ''straightening through smoothing,'' which is a numerical frequency filter, is generalized in order to provide a transmission function having any shape. This frequency filter requires such a small memory that it can be performed using a minicomputer or even a programmable hand held calculator and the number of channels used is not limited to a power of 2, as in the case of the fast Fourier transform. For some filtering functions the number of operations required is smaller than with the fast Fourier transform.