apodization

noun

ap·​o·​di·​za·​tion ˌa-pə-də-ˈzā-shən 

-ˌdī-ˈzā-

electrical engineering

: the process of altering a signal (such as one emitted by an electrical sensor) to make its mathematical description smoother and more easily manipulatable

The system also implements a standard suite of spectral estimation algorithms. The user can … use apodization with different weighting functions or compensate for distortions arising from equal data spacing.

—Physics Today, March 1993

apodize

ˈa-pə-ˌdīz 

transitive verb

apodizes; apodized; apodizing

Amplitude and phase errors tend to increase at high spatial frequencies, so we weighted the data with a function that is 1 at a frequency of 0 and falls to 0 at a spatial frequency of 2.8 cycles per arc second. A similar function was used to apodize the visibilities before reconstructing the images.

—R. R. Howell et al., Science, 4 Oct. 1985

Word History

Etymology

borrowed from French apodisation, from a- a- entry 2 + pod- pod- (alluding to the pieds "feet" produced by diffraction in an optical image) + -isation -ization

First Known Use

1964, in the meaning defined above

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