Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem
Teorema de muestreo de Nyquist-Shannon
- Date
- 1949 (con antecedentes desde 1915) · confidence medium
- Place
- Bell Labs, Murray Hill, New Jersey, United States
- Credited to
- Claude Shannon, formalizing earlier results by Nyquist, Whittaker and Kotelnikov
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
Shannon proved and popularized in 1948-1949 the theorem stating that a band-limited signal can be fully reconstructed from samples taken at more than twice its maximum frequency, the basis of all modern analog-to-digital conversion.
A case of multiple discovery: E. T. Whittaker published an interpolation formula in 1915 with an unclear proof; Kinnosuke Ogura proved it in 1920; Nyquist (1928) noted the importance of the frequency but did not state the theorem; Kotelnikov independently reached it in the USSR in 1933 (hence "Kotelnikov's theorem" in Russian literature); Someya also stated it in Japan in 1949. Shannon, in 1948-1949, gave the modern formulation and made it common property among communications engineers.
What it led to
- Analog-to-digital conversion and digital audio (CDs, digital telephony)
- Information theory and digital communications