Data compression for producing a spectrum trace

A data compression method for producing spectrum traces may divide signal data into multiple transform frames, produce a spectrum trace for each transform frame using a time domain to frequency domain transform, and combine the multiple frames from the analysis window into a single spectrum 5 trace according to the spectrum amplitude of corresponding points in each frame. A device comprising a port to receive a signal or data set; and circuitry in communication with the port to segment the data record into frames, multiply each frame by a windowing function, transform each frame from a time domain representation to a frequency domain representation, and compress the 10 frames using a detection function to create a single spectrum trace. This data compression provides flexibility to allow users to select analysis length, resolution bandwidth (RBW) and number of trace points independently, eliminating the coupling often found in traditional approaches.