Anamorphic time stretch transform and its application to analog bandwidth compression

A method for compressing the time-bandwidth of analog signals is introduced and demonstrated. As one of its applications, this mathematical transformation performs feature-selective time-stretch. When used as an analog pre-processor before the digitizer, it enables capture of random signals that would otherwise be beyond digitizer´s bandwidth. At the same time, it compresses the digital data volume. Our method is lossless and does not require prior knowledge of the signal. It is inspired by operation of Fovea centralis in human eye and by anamorphic transformation in visual arts. Implemented in the digital domain, the proposed transform also performs data and image compression.