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ID: past-exam-of-the-physics-a-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2021/paper-1/section-a/5/solution
Past exam of the physics A course of the University of Cambridge 2021 Paper 1 Section A 5 Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-18
For a real signal with highest frequency , the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem gives the nominal Nyquist sampling rateTo cover an arbitrary component exactly at the band edge, choose : a sine sampled at exactly can have every sample equal to zero for an unfortunate phase. Practical aliasing suppression also calls for a margin above the nominal limiting rate.
With rounding to the nearest digitizer level, quantization with step has the uniform-quantization error boundThus the stated digitizer meets the requested nominal amplitude precision per sample, assuming no clipping or other errors. The bandwidth sets the nominal minimum sampling rate; the level spacing sets the rounding precision. Strictly, the sampling theorem reconstructs exactly from exact samples. A uniform error bound on the entire reconstructed continuous waveform is not guaranteed by the level spacing and sampling rate alone; that stronger requirement needs a specified reconstruction and noise model.
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