Why Fourier transform is so important to signal processing and what does it tell

us about the signal? Does it only apply to digital signal processing or does it
apply to analog signals as well?
Solution:
* It is an extremely powerful mathematical tool that allows you to view your sig
nals in a different domain,(Frequency domain ) inside which several difficult p
roblems and calculations become very simple to analyze.
* The Fourier transform broken the signal down into its constituent frequencies
(i.e., into sines and cosines of all frequencies).
* Fourier transform of a signal tells you what frequencies are present in your s
ignal and in what proportion.
* The magnitude square of the Fourier transform, |X(f)|2 instantly tells how mu
ch power the signal x(t) has at a particular frequency f.
* The Fourier transforms is applicable irrespective of whether the signal is con
tinuous or discrete, as long as it is absolutely integrable. So Analog signal pr
ocessing uses Fourier transforms as long as the signals satisfy this criterion.
* Fourier transform is a basic tool for many applications .for example: Filter a
nd Speech, Image & picture related processing s etc.
Why we go for FFT ? How does the FFT works? How efficient FFT When compared to D
FT ?
Solution
The Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) is simply a fast (computationally efficient) wa
y to calculate the Discrete Fourier Transform.
FFT greatly reduces the amount of calculation required
The FFT decomposes the set of data to be transformed into a series of smaller da
ta sets to be transformed. Then, it decomposes those smaller sets into even smal
ler sets. At each stage of processing, the results of the previous stage are com
bined in special way. Finally, it calculates the DFT of each small data set. For
example, an FFT of size 32 is broken into 2 FFTs of size 16, which are broken i
nto 4 FFTs of size 8, which are broken into 8 FFTs of size 4, which are broken i
nto 16 FFTs of size 2. Calculating a DFT of size 2 is trivial.