Help on estimation the gradient of a sigal sequence

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cantata
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Dear All,

I have a signal, which is a time series from measuring some quantity. The trend of the signal is decreasing. However, due to noise, the signal is fluctuating. Is there some method to get a good estimation of the gradient of the signal, i.e. the average reduction of the quantity? Thanks a lot!

Maria
 
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The easiest would be to do a least-squares fit of a curve to the data. You can even do that in Excel -- just use the online Help function in Excel to guide you through the process.

Another way would be to characterize the spectrum of the noise versus the signal, and do a digital filter of the data to improve your signal-to-noise ratio. "Designing Digital Filters" by Williams is an excellent introductory book to DSP.