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It might be a simple question but I couldn't find it via google, so I might not use the right terms.

Say I have two measurement values $P$ and $Q$. $P$ has 7 bits of resolution and $Q$ has 6 bits. So P can have all values from 0 up to $2^7 -1$, and Q can have all values from 0 up to $2^6 -1$.

Now I calculate a derived value $R$ through $R = aP + bQ + c$, a, b and c are constants.

How many bits of resolution does $R$ have? $\min(6,7)$, $\max(6,7)$ or $6 + 7$?

I know that $R$ can have $2^{13}$ different values, but are the least significant bits really... significant? Can I actually make decisions based on those bits?

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That depends largely on the constants and how you implement the multiplication. If you multiply two signed fixed point numbers with lengths of $B_1$ and $B_2$ the result will be a signed fixed point number with a length of $B_1+B_2=1$ bits.

If you just sum $P$ and $Q$ the resulting resolution would be

$$ B_{sum} = \log_2\left(2^{B_P-1} + 2^{B_Q-1} \right) + 1 = 7.585$$

In practice you need 8 bits to represent it without overflow or truncation.

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