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Gaussian noise

What is gaussian noise? A clear definition from the acoustics and sound section of our glossary, with 12 related terms, tools to try and further reading.

Definition of Gaussian noise

In signal processing theory, Gaussian noise, named after Carl Friedrich Gauss, is a kind of signal noise that has a probability density function (pdf) equal to that of the normal distribution (which is also known as the Gaussian distribution). In other words, the values that the noise can take are Gaussian-distributed. A special case is white Gaussian noise, in which the values at any pair of time points are identically distributed and statistically independent (and hence uncorrelated).

The probability density function

{\displaystyle p(z)={\frac {1}{\sigma {\sqrt {2\pi }}}}e^{-{\frac {(z-\mu )^{2}}{2\sigma ^{2}}}}}

Related terms

Frequently asked questions

What is Gaussian noise?

In signal processing theory, Gaussian noise, named after Carl Friedrich Gauss, is a kind of signal noise that has a probability density function (pdf) equal to that of the normal distribution (which is also known as the Gaussian distribution).

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