Signals can be composed by a superposition of an infinite number
of sine and cosine functions. The coefficients of the superpositiondepend on the signal being represented and are equivalent to knowing
the function itself.
The classic Fourier series as derived originally expressed a periodic signal (period
) in terms of harmonically related sines and cosines.
The complex Fourier series and the
sine-cosine series are identical , each representing a
signal's spectrum.The
Fourier coefficients ,
and
,
express the real and imaginary parts respectively of the spectrum while the coefficients
of the complex Fourier series express the spectrum as a magnitude and phase.
Equating the
classic Fourier series to the
complex Fourier series , an extra factor of two and complex conjugate become necessary to relate the Fourier coefficients in each.
Derive this relationship between the coefficients of the two Fourier series.
Write the coefficients of the complex Fourier series in Cartesian form as
and substitute into the expression for the complex Fourier series.
Simplifying each term in the sum using Euler's formula,
We now combine terms that have the same frequency index
in magnitude .
Because the signal is real-valued, the coefficients of the complex Fourier series have conjugate symmetry:
or
and
.
After we add the positive-indexed and negative-indexed terms, each term in the Fourier series becomes
.
To obtain the
classic Fourier series , we must have
and
.
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Just as with the complex Fourier series, we can find the
Fourier coefficients using the
orthogonality properties of sinusoids.
Note that the cosine and sine of harmonically related frequencies, even the
same frequency, are orthogonal.
These orthogonality relations follow from the following
important trigonometric identities.
These identities allow you to substitute a sum of sines and/or
cosines for a product of them. Each term in the sum can beintegrated by noticing one of two important properties of
sinusoids.
- The integral of a sinusoid over an
integer number of periods equals zero.
- The integral of the
square of a
unit-amplitude sinusoid over a period
equals
.
To use these, let's, for example, multiply the Fourier series for a signal by the cosine of the
harmonic
and integrate. The idea is that, because integration is linear,
the integration will sift out all but the term involving
.
The first and third terms are zero; in the second, the only
non-zero term in the sum results when the indices
and
are equal (but not zero), in which case we obtain
.
If
,
we obtain
.
Consequently,
All of the Fourier coefficients can be found similarly.
The expression for
is referred to as the
average value of
.
Why?
The average of a set of numbers is the sum divided by the
number of terms. Viewing signal integration as the limit ofa Riemann sum, the integral corresponds to the average.
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What is the Fourier series for a unit-amplitude square wave?
We found that the complex Fourier series coefficients are given by
.
The coefficients are pure imaginary, which means
.
The coefficients of the sine terms are given by
so that
Thus, the Fourier series for the square wave is
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Let's find the Fourier series representation for the half-wave
rectified sinusoid.
Begin with the sine terms in the series; to find
we must calculate the integral
Using our trigonometric identities turns our integral of a product of
sinusoids into a sum of integrals of individual sinusoids,which are much easier to evaluate.
Thus,
On to the cosine terms. The average value, which corresponds
to
,
equals
.
The remainder of the cosine coefficients are easy to find, butyield the complicated result
Thus, the Fourier series for the half-wave rectified sinusoid
has non-zero terms for the average, the fundamental, and theeven harmonics.
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