delay

In signal processing, group delay and phase delay are delay times experienced by a signal's various frequency components when the signal passes through a linear time-invariant system (LTI), such as a microphone, coaxial cable, amplifier, loudspeaker, telecommunications system or ethernet cable. These delays are generally frequency dependent, which means that different frequency components experience different delays. As a result, the signal's waveform experiences distortion as it passes through the system. This distortion can cause problems such as poor fidelity in analog video and analog audio, or a high bit-error rate in a digital bit stream. For a modulation signal (passband signal), the information carried by the signal is carried exclusively in the wave envelope. Group delay therefore operates only with the frequency components derived from the envelope.

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