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EQ Archive

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Problem 2—In digital signal processing applications, there is sometimes an effect known as the Gibbs phenomenon, which is a characteristic ringing associated with sharp edges and transients. Is this a function of sampling, quantization, or filtering in the system? Or is it a combination of all three? Is this a problem?

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Problem 3—If you could operate your automobile on Mars, what would the braking distances be like relative to Earth?

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Problem 4—What are the five built-in and 10 “transient” commands that come in a standard CP/M 2.2 distribution? What’s the difference between the two categories? 

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Problem 5—You’re caught out in the rain without your umbrella, and the nearest shelter is hundreds of yards away. At least there’s no wind. The rain is falling straight down at a fairly steady rate. Are you going to get wetter if you run to the shelter or just walk slowly?

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Problem 6—Sometimes an application needs to calculate the date of “yesterday,” and a tempting way to do this is to simply subtract 86,400 (24 × 60 × 60) from the current system time (free-running seconds counter) and then covert the result to a date. But this will fail twice a year. Can you correctly identify the exact times for which it will fail and why?

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Problem 7—The following text was found in an RF design reference: “When the receiver must cover a wide carrier-frequency range, the choice of f_LO = f_C + f_IF may result in a smaller and more readily achieved local oscillator tuning ratio.”

What is the tuning ratio of the local oscillator of a superhet receiver, and why is this important?

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