Energy Signal & Power Signal In physics, energy is work and power is work per time; Work = Force

Displacement Power = Work / Time For Kinetic energy is given by

In an electrical signal, the instantaneous power for the voltage across the resistance R and its energy are defined;

In signal processing, total energy of signal x(t) is defined as similar way; (Notice that it is square of absolute value.)

where |x(t)| denotes the magnitude of x(t). It is necessary to get a scalar quantity for complex signal, because magnitude of complex number is defined as .

And, it is also squared because of common convention to use similar terminology for any signal (look at the definitions of kinetic and electrical signal energy). Therefore, the energy of a signal is defined as a sum of square of magnitude. The average power of signal is defined by;

A signal can be categorized into energy signal or power signal: An energy signal has a finite energy, 0 < E < . In other words, energy signals have values only in the limited time duration. For example, a signal having only one square pulse is energy signal. A signal that decays exponentially has finite energy, so, it is also an energy signal. The power of an energy signal is 0, because of dividing finite energy by infinite time (or length).

On the contrary, the power signal is not limited in time. It always exists from beginning to end and it never ends. For example, sine wave in infinite length is power signal. Since the energy of a power signal is infinite, it has no meaning to us. Thus, we use power (energy per given time) for power signal, because the power of power signal is finite, 0 < P < . ENERGY SIGNAL Some signals qualify to be classified as energy signals, whereas some other signals qualify to be classified as power signals. Given a continuous-time signal f(t), the energy contained over a finite time interval is defined as follows.

Equation (3.8) defines the energy contained in the signal over time interval from T1 till T2. On the other hand, equation (3.9) defines the total energy contained in the signal. If the total energy of a signal is a finite non-zero value, then that signal is classified as an energy signal. Typically the signals which are not periodic turns out to be energy signals. For example, a single rectangular pulse and a decaying exponential signal are energy signals. POWER SIGNAL When a reference to power in a signal is made, it points to the average power. Power is defined as energy per second. For a continuous-time signal, we can obtain an expression for power from equation (3.9).

Most of the periodic signals tend to be power signals. Given the period of a cycle, the power of a periodic signal can be defined by equation (3.11). Equation (3.11) can be used to find the power of a dc signal also. The dc signal is also a power signal. If power of a signal is a finite non-zero value and its energy is infinite, then that signal is classified as a power signal. There are some signals which can be classified neither as power signals nor as energy signals. For example, a ramp signal defined from zero till infinity is neither a power signal nor an energy

signal, since both power and energy of ramp signal is not bounded. But in practice. such a signal cannot exist and hence such a signal is not of any practical importance. The idea of the "size" of a signal is crucial to many applications. It is nice to know how much electricity can be used in a defibrillator without ill effects, for instance. It is also nice to know if the signal driving a set of headpones is enough to create a sound. While both of these examples deal with electric signals, they are clearly very different signals with very different tolerances. For this reason, it is convenient to quantify this idea of "size". This leads to the ideas of signal energy and signal power. Signal Energy Since we often think of signal as a function of varying amplitude through time, it seems to reason that a good measurement of the strength of a signal would be the area under the curve. However, this area may have a negative part. This negative part does not have less strength than a positive signal of the same size (reversing your grip on the paper clip in the socket is not going to make you any more lively). This suggests either squaring the signal or taking its absolute value, then finding the area under that curve. It turns out that what we call the energy of a signal is the area under the squared signal.

Figure 1: The energy of this signal is the shaded region. Ef=(|f(t)|)2dt (1) Signal Power Our definition of energy seems reasonable, and it is. However, what if the signal does not decay? In this case we have infinite energy for any such signal. Does this mean that a sixty hertz sine wave feeding into your headphones is as strong as the sixty hertz sine wave coming out of your outlet? Obviously not. This is what leads us to the idea of signal power.

Figure 2: A simple, common signal with infinite energy. Power is a time average of energy (energy per unit time). This is useful when the energy of the signal goes to infinity. Pf=limit T1TT2T2(|f(t)|)2dt (2)

Figure 3: We compute the energy per a specific unit of time, then allow that time to go to infinity. 1. Compute EnergyT 2. Then look at limit TEnergyT Pf is often called the mean-square value of f. Pf is then called the root mean squared (RMS) value of f. Energy vs. Power

"Energy signals" have finite energy. "Power signals" have finite and non-zero power.