Autocorrelation

Above: A plot of a series of 100 random numbers concealing a sine function. Below: The sine function revealed in a correlogram produced by autocorrelation.
Visual comparison of convolution, cross-correlation, and autocorrelation. For the operations involving function f, and assuming the height of f is 1.0, the value of the result at 5 different points is indicated by the shaded area below each point. Also, the symmetry of f is the reason and are identical in this example.

Autocorrelation, sometimes known as serial correlation in the discrete time case, is the correlation of a signal with a delayed copy of itself as a function of delay. Informally, it is the similarity between observations of a random variable as a function of the time lag between them. The analysis of autocorrelation is a mathematical tool for finding repeating patterns, such as the presence of a periodic signal obscured by noise, or identifying the missing fundamental frequency in a signal implied by its harmonic frequencies. It is often used in signal processing for analyzing functions or series of values, such as time domain signals.

Different fields of study define autocorrelation differently, and not all of these definitions are equivalent. In some fields, the term is used interchangeably with autocovariance.

Unit root processes, trend-stationary processes, autoregressive processes, and moving average processes are specific forms of processes with autocorrelation.