Moment detection and coding

THE APPLICATION of moments to determine the center of gravity, moment of inertia, and other properties of mechanical systems is well known. These computations involve the product of integral powers of the distance measured from some reference point and area, volume, mass, etc. Moments can also be used to determine a configuration of electric signals consisting of one or more d-c pulses restricted to exist at specified periods of time measured from a reference of zero time. In the electrical case, the moments consist of the products of voltage or current and integral powers of the time. For this reason, they may be called temporal moments. The temporal moment of order k of a function of time f(t), calculated in the interval from t = O, to t = T, is defined as follows