filters - What is the true meaning of a minimum phase system?

What is the true meaning of a minimum phase system? Reading the Wikipedia article and Oppenheim is some help, in that, we understand that for an LTI system, minimum phase means the inverse is causal and stable. (So that means zeros and poles are inside the unit circle), but what does "phase" and "minimum" have to do with it? Can we tell a system is minimum phase by looking at the phase response of the DFT somehow?

Answer

The relation of "minimum" to "phase" in a minimum phase system or filter can be seen if you plot the unwrapped phase against frequency. You can use a pole zero diagram of the system response to help do a incremental graphical plot of the frequency response and phase angle. This method helps in doing a phase plot without phase wrapping discontinuities.

Put all the zeros inside the unit circle (or in left half plane in the continuous-time case), where all the poles have to be as well for system stability. Add up the angles from all the poles, and the negative of the angles from all the zeros, to calculate total phase to a point on the unit circle, as that frequency response reference point moves around the unit circle. Plot phase vs. frequency. Now compare this plot with a similar plot for a pole-zero diagram with any of the zeros swapped outside the unit circle (non-minimum phase). The overall average slope of the line with all the zeros inside will be lower than the average slope of any other line representing the same LTI system response (e.g. with a zero reflected outside the unit circle). This is because the "wind ups" in phase angle are all mostly cancelled by the "wind downs" in phase angle only when both the poles and zeros are on the same side of the unit circle line. Otherwise, for each zero outside, there will be an extra "wind up" of increasing phase angle that will remain mostly uncancelled as the plot reference point "winds" around the unit circle from 0 to PI. (...or up the vertical axis in the continuous-time case.)

This arrangement, all the zeros inside the unit circle, thus corresponds to the minimum total increase in phase, which corresponds to minimum average total phase delay, which corresponds to maximum compactness in time, for any given (stable) set of poles and zeros with the exact same frequency magnitude response. Thus the relationship between "minimum" and "phase" for this particular arrangement of poles and zeros.

Also see my old word picture with strange crank handles in the ancient usenet comp.dsp archives: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.dsp/ulAX0_Tn65c/Fgqph7gqd3kJ