Glossary definition of 'Swept Sine'

(Test & Measurement) a Signal Generator function often used as a stimulus in impulse response and acoustic testing (also known as a `chirp`) comprising a sine wave swept smoothly across the audio band. The rate of progress may be linear or logarithmic (a `log chirp`). The entire sweep is usually arranged to repeat exactly over the FFT Analyzer buffer acquisition period to allow synchronous (windowless) analysis and contiguous averaging, and often contains a period of silence between repetitions in order to prevent reverberance spilling between acquisitions.