Revision as of 12:25, 2 September 2011 by Mboutin (Talk | contribs)

Continuous-time Fourier transform: from omega to f

In ECE301, you learned that the Fourier transform of a step function $ x(t)=u(t) $ is the following:

$ {\mathcal X} (\omega) = \frac{1}{j \omega} + \pi \delta (\omega ). $

Use this fact to obtain an expression for the Fourier transform $ X(f) $ (in terms of frequency in hertz) of the step function. (Your answer should agree with the one given in this table.) Justify all your steps.


Share your answers below

You will receive feedback from your instructor and TA directly on this page. Other students are welcome to comment/discuss/point out mistakes/ask questions too!


Answer 1

There are a few things that you need to know to accomplish this problem. The two main formulas that you need are $ \omega = 2 \pi f $ and $ \delta(cx)= \frac{1}{c} \delta(x) $ for c>0.

PROOF

$ \int_{-\infty}^{\infty}\delta(x)dx = 1 $

$ y=cx => \frac{dy}{c}=dx $

$ \int_{-\infty}^\infty \delta(y)\frac{dy}{c}=\frac{1}{c} $

THEREFORE

$ \delta(\omega)=\delta(2\pi f)=\frac{1}{2\pi}\delta(f) $

and

$ {\mathcal X} (\omega) = \frac{1}{j \omega} + \pi \delta (\omega ) = \frac{1}{2}(\frac{1}{j\pi f} + \delta(f)) $

-my

Instructor's comments: In essence, this answer is correct, except that you forgot to state that
$ \delta(cx)= \left\{ \begin{array}{ll} \infty, & x = 0,\\ 0, & \text{ else.} \end{array} \right. $
However the "flow of thoughts" is a bit hard to follow. I would suggest a slight reordering/rearrangement of the arguments. You could save space by giving less details regarding the change of variables when integrating. -pm

Answer 2

Write it here.

Answer 3

write it here.


Back to ECE438 Fall 2011 Prof. Boutin

Alumni Liaison

Ph.D. on Applied Mathematics in Aug 2007. Involved on applications of image super-resolution to electron microscopy

Francisco Blanco-Silva