Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Correct method for "compressing" a power spectrum

[Brian Padalino]

On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 8:47 AM, Marcus D. Leech <address@hidden> wrote:
> The original {1,2,4,8,16}M-bin data are used for SETI analysis, while
> the "compressed" version
>  is used for a quick visual, "conventional" spectral display.

In SETI analysis, is it more interesting to see a wider bandwidth
signal, or single frequency bins of larger magnitudes?

If you would rather see wider bandwidths, it might be interesting to
set each of N bins to an opacity of 1/N and draw them on top of each
other.  That way the more that are drawn on top of each other appear
darker in appearance (wider bandwidth) as opposed to a single outlier
skewing all results.  Moreover, for zooming, I think this would be the
most dynamic while maintaining full fidelity of the signal
representation.

I think there are a lot of good visualizations that can be done
without compromising the frequency resolution you have obtained with
such large FFTs.

I'd be interested to hear what method you end up using, and what is
important in your SETI analysis.

Brian