Decimation

Decimation is a two-step sample rate reduction method where the data is first filtered, then samples are discarded.  The filter operation reduces the bandwidth and increase the SNR. For high order decimation, the SNR is very high and the data word has to be increased from 16 bits to 32 bits so that the quantization noise does not limit SNR. The sample skip operation reduce the data rate by discarding samples. (Notice the difference to sample skip, where samples are discarded without filtering.)