If a signal is not sampled at a rate greater than twice its frequency, aliasing will occur. This shows an analog signal with a frequency of fa sampled at a frequency fs, where fa is slightly less than fs. This clearly violates the Nyquist criteria, and the aliased signal is shown in RED. There are not enough samples taken to reproduce the original signal correctly. The frequency of the alias signal is fs – fa. If the signal bandwidth is limited to less than half the sampling frequency then aliasing will not necessarily be a problem, since there is no possibility of ambiguity.

