In signal processing, the overlap–add method is an efficient way to evaluate the discrete convolution of a very long signal with a finite impulse response (FIR) filter : where h[m] = 0 for m outside the region [1, M].This article uses common abstract notations, such as or in which it is understood that the functions should be thought of in their totality, rather than at specific instants (see Convolution#Notation). The concept is to divide the problem into multiple convolutions of h[n] with short segments of : where L is an arbitrary segment length. Then: where: