SA103: Introduction to Signals Analysis

SA103: Introduction to Signals Analysis provides students with a foundational understanding of how real-world signals are generated, transmitted, collected, and analyzed across the electromagnetic spectrum. Building on the tool familiarity established in SA102, this course focuses on developing analytic intuition and core signal analysis tradecraft rather than button-pushing or rote procedures.
 
Students will explore fundamental signal characteristics including amplitude, frequency, phase, bandwidth, noise, and modulation, and learn how these properties manifest in time-domain, frequency-domain, and time-frequency representations. Emphasis is placed on recognizing signal behavior, identifying modulation types, and understanding how environmental and system effects alter signals in realistic collection scenarios.
 
Through guided instruction and hands-on exercises, learners will apply signal analysis concepts to practical use cases such as carrier identification, modulation classification, symbol rate estimation, and signal quality assessment. The course bridges theory and practice by tying abstract concepts directly to observable patterns in real signal data, preparing students for more advanced waveform exploitation, demodulation, and protocol analysis courses later in the Digital Atlas curriculum.
 
By the end of SA103, students will possess a solid analytical framework for approaching unfamiliar signals, enabling them to make informed decisions about collection strategy, demodulation techniques, and downstream analysis workflows.