Intro to Fourier Analysis

• Definition
• Analysis of periodic waves
• Analysis of aperiodic waves
• Digitization
• Time-frequency uncertainty
 The Fourier series
• Any continuous waveform can be
partitioned into a sum of sinusoidal waves
• P(t) = Po + SPn cos (2pfnt + Fn)
• Po is the ambient pressure
• Pn is the pressure of the nth cosine wave
• fn is the frequency of the nth cosine wave
• Fn is the phase of the nth cosine wave
 Sound spectrum
Time domain

Frequency domain
Frequency
spectrum
 Types of periodic waveforms

• Amplitude varies in a repeating manner -

amplitude modulation
• Frequency varies in a repeating manner -
frequency modulation
• The shape of the waveform varies in a
repeating manner - nonsinusoidal periodic
wave
 Amplitude modulation (AM)

Carrier frequency
plus side bands
 Frequency modulation (FM)

Modulation
determines the
number of side
bands
 Periodic nonsinusoidal signals

Harmonic series
 Harmonic series
• Harmonic frequencies
are integer multiples of
the fundamental frequency,
i.e. w, 2w, 3w, 4w …
• Dirichlet’s rule states that the energy in
higher harmonics falls off exponentially
with the frequency of the harmonic
• Note, however, that some animals alter the
amplitude of harmonics by selective
filtering during sound production
 Compound signals
• Nonsinusoidal modulation of a sine wave
• Sinusoidal modulation of a nonsinusoidal
carrier wave
• Nonsinusoidal modulation of a
nonsinusoidal carrier wave
Pulsed sine wave (frog or insect)
Fourier analysis of aperiodic signals

• Most natural signals have a short, not

infinite, duration
• The more aperiodic a signal is, the more
frequency components are needed to
describe the signal with a Fourier series
• In the limit, an infinitely short signal has
constant amplitude at all frequencies, a delta
pulse
Finite sounds and Fourier ‘lobes’
 Fourier “windows”

Bartlett

Hamming
Digitizing sound
 Aliasing

Nyquist frequency = 1/2 the sampling frequency

Fourier window size and bandwidth
Time-frequency uncertainty
 Sound spectrum “waterfall”

Song sparrow
 Sonagram
Song sparrow

Narrow bandwidth analysis is good for frequency

measurements, but not accurate for time measurements