ENSC 320-2015-1

Dirac delta functions and Fourier transform

basics
This is taken from Rodney Vaughan’s ENSC 810 notes for:

ENSC 810: Background: Dirac delta function for dummies

! You do not have to know all of this material! The Dirac delta,
and the Fourier and Laplace transforms are tools for designing
and understanding electric circuits, and they not the subject of
the course. But you need to have some understanding of them.
For those that just want the basics and no more, you can snooze
for much of this lecture material. You will not be examined on the
science of this material, but you need to know how to use it with
circuits of course.

! This lecture and these notes are included because thereare

always requests for some more information on the delta function
and Fourier transform. And they are so fundamentally important
to electrical engineering and especially engineering science!

! If you are really, really interested, include in your reading the

section “Digging a little deeper” (page 10 onwards). This is not
for the faint-hearted, but it gives a compact background for those
interested in signal processing.

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! In electric circuits, we deal with continuous time-domain signals.
These circuit signals (representing voltages or currents) are
hard to solve just using time domain techniques.

! So we convert the time domain signal description into the

frequency domain and solve it in the frequency domain and
transform back. Hey presto!

! The Fourier transform has real number frequencies, . The

Laplace uses complex numbers for the frequency, s=+j. So
here is another example of the importance of being familiar with
complex numbers! The transform variables are, for example:-

Images from Wikipedia, and many other sources:-

Paul Dirac (1902-1984)

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• Paul Dirac (1902-1984), British electrical engineer who defected
into physics research. Shared a Nobel prize 1933.

• the Dirac delta function is denoted with the lower case Greek
delta symbol, , here expressed as a function of t.

• It is not a proper function. Strictly, it is only made respectable as

a function, through the theory of distributions.

• The definition of is given by applying it to a well-defined

function, , inside an integral, viz.,

and so it is often also called a sampling function because it acts

to sample at .
• This has two interpretations:

(i) the presence of a delta function in an integral makes the

integral trivial, i.e., the integral is collapsed by
formulating with a delta function;
(ii) comprises a distribution of impulses, each of which
has magnitude .

• What are the dimensions (units) of ?

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• We often describe a tapped delay line as a model for a sequence
of echoes, using Dirac delta functions. This has little
respectability mathematically (and usually, in a physical sense as
well).

• But as engineers we thrive on dirty tricks as long as they are

effective - because they are powerful in finding sufficiently
accurate answers in simple ways. The Dirac delta function is
perhaps the most powerful analytic device in our tool kit.

• From the above defining equation, it is evident that

so the Dirac delta has a property of a pdf.

• We can consider the Dirac delta, or even define it, this way:

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• This allows us to directly write

a powerful tool in signal processing. Similarly, .

• The differentiation is also useful sometimes, ,

which can be defined using the limits of the limiting

form of adjacent rectangle functions, each side of x=0, and each
rectangle of width a and height -A and +A, respectively.

• Sometimes the rectangle function is written as . It is the

most common “practical” delta function, but note that it is not
analytic, even when .

• Sketch the doublet. What are the dimensions of the doublet?

• The doublet is also a useful tool in signal processing. Note that

looks like a pair of opposing Dirac deltas. This can represent a
pair of signals, for example echos which arrive at essentially the
same time, but are out of phase. The dodgy situation is, do we
have a non-zero resultant signal here, or not? This crops up in
operations called deconvolution (inverse filtering) and appears in
intentional signal cancellation, such as acoustic noise
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 suppression systems (adaptive noise control), and in radio signal
detection in the presence of an interferer.

• Some “practical” delta functions are:

• H/W: Sketch these functions.

• Why is the term in the first equation?
• Which practical delta function do you prefer?
•

• Show that .

cf., Fourier shift theorem:-

• What is the convolution of and ?

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 Fourier transforms and Dirac deltas

• The Fourier transform is the basic tool of signal processing.

There are Fourier relations in most aspects of physics-related
problems, so the transforms crop in many engineering
disciplines, it’s not just another piece of cute maths. The most
familiar one to us, as engineers, is the time and frequency pair.
Here the electrical engineering notation convention is

• The Fourier pair is often written

• There are many other notations, such as having on each

equation, instead of having in just one of them; or using the

evil physics form of using instead of , and so on.

• Put . What is the corresponding ?

• Put . What is the corresponding ?
• Find the transform of .

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• Note that it is easy to accept that ,

but is not so obvious.

• Some useful relations to help us through this dilemma:-

From , we get

(which is why the term is there) and

• Note or rather

This term is annoying, but this conventional notation has

advantages. The generalized form (below) does not need it.
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• The functions can have many dimensions, for example a volume
function would have three cartesian kernels,

There are some theorems that work for higher order Fourier
transform pairs, but not for lower orders such one or two.

• Find the Fourier transform of a one-dimensional rectangle

function, and sketch the pair. Show how they can both be delta
functions.

• Verify that the FT of a Gaussian is a Gaussian,

and so with , except for the constant , is its

own Fourier transform. Show that they can both be delta
functions (but not at the same time!). Sketch the transform cases
for large and small variance.

• Note there are several books of cute Fourier transforms!

• Explain the relationship to the Laplace transform. (Note the use

of a contour integral for this.)
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 Digging a little deeper

• To go further in basic signal theory, you must be familiar with the

convolution theorem, Parseval’s formula (energy conserving
transform), the moment formulas, characteristic functions,
autocorrelations and energy spectra.

• If you need to go deeper with this stuff than available from a

course, i.e., if you want to pursue this as part of your research,
then a healthy approach is to think about a unified approach to
integral transforms. These can be written as

where the ‘s are contours in the complex plane of the complex

variables u and z, respectively, and the kernels are and .

• So the transform is denoted

• The transform is characterized by the contours and the kernels.

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• The transform must be self-consistent, and using as a dummy
variable, and the independence of u and z, this means that

• Therefore,

Similarly, following the same trick for ,

• The family of general convolveable transforms (GCTs):-

• Consider transforms whose kernels have these properties

(where ( ) are dummy variables, and etc.):-

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 Then it is easy (homework) to show that the multiplication,

has a transform of

and the convolution (denoted ) involves taking one of the

functions, reversing it, shifting it, multiplying it with other function,

and integrating.

• Verify the above equation using the GCT kernel properties

• Note that

for GCTs.

• Convolution, or its GCT equivalent, multiplication, is the basic

channel transfer operation, i.e., filtering.

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• A simpler, but very similar operation to convolution is the
autocorrelation, which is the same as a convolution except that
the function is not reversed. The Fourier transform of an
autocorrelated function is the function’s energy spectrum.

• Hundreds of books of transforms are available, for the

transform-geeks. Some of the commonly used GCT transforms
are: Fourier, Fourier sine, Fourier cosine, Laplace, Z, Mellin,
Hankel, Kontorovich-Lebedev, Hilbert, Kramer-Kronig.

• This list is far from exhaustive, and plenty of new transforms can
be constructed.

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• Conservation of energy in GCTs
define the transform of the conjugates as

and the following Parseval’s theorem statement includes finding

what (*) means.

• The (generalized) energy in the function F(z) is and

using the convolution result above,

so if the transform is energy-conserving, then the mystery operation

denoted by the superscript (*) is
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 and

• Note that in the GCT notation, there are no scale factors such as
(As used in the electrical engineering notation) in the
integral relations.

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• GCT Examples (notation: ):
Transform

Fourier
(note the different
notation)

Fourier
sine
Fourier
cosine

Laplace

Hilbert

Z Same as Laplace Same as

(Bromwich Laplace
contour)

• Note the form of the Fourier transform in this table where the
GCT notation is used. Any removal of the from the kernels
will mean that the transform is no longer energy conserving. The
situation is recovered by using the as a scaling constant, and
this is used in the conventional electrical engineering notation.
Watch out for this factor of when you use Parseval’s theorem!
• Note the similarity between the Z and Laplace transforms.
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• Note that the Laplace transform is a kind of “generalized Fourier
transform” in the sense that the frequency is taken as complex,
instead of real. This means that the “sum of constant amplitude
cissoids” becomes a “sum of decaying (or diverging!) cissoids”.

• Signal processing is mainly based on the Fourier transform. In

the above table, the complex values of z and u are specialized to
their real values, x and v. This is because we observe physical
systems as real quantities.

• Check the above table for errors! Add other popular transforms
such as Mellin, Hankel, Kontorovich-Lebedev, and try it for the
Kramers-Kronig relations. Show some examples for Z.

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• The usual applications and sometimes-used symbol notation:
v x
Signal or waveform Voltage t=time f=frequency
(or amplitude)
spectrum
Autocorrelation of Energy = delay
signal (or intensity) (or shift, f
spectrum or lag)

Autocorrelation of an Power
infinitely long signal spectrum f

Source distribution far field pattern x=aperture

on antenna or coordinate
microphone
is angle to
broadside of
aperture

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• Sampling basics
A lot of signal processing is undertaken by a digital processor,
and so a sequence of samples, instead of an analogue
signal, is of interest, and the associated Fourier transform is the
“sampled spectrum”. A delta function is often used to denote
samples in a convenient way, but it’s best to start with the
idealized practical sampling function, or rectangle function.

• The rectangle function is

is also called Woodward’s pulse function.

Note that this is a delta function if we define it with limiting

values.

• The sinc function is also called Woodward’s sampling function.

Recall that its limiting form is similar to a delta function, and

• Sketch these functions, note the zeros, and note the integral:

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• Using the electrical engineering Fourier notation convention for
time and angular frequency, show that

and that

• Consider f(v) is zero for , then .

• It can be also written mathematically as

i.e., an infinite sum of cissoids, where the fn are all constants

such that the summation term is unity.

• Then

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• Using the sinc properties, this means that

since

• Therefore, a sequence of samples, {fn}, can define .

(Similarly, a sequence of samples of the spectrum, {Fm}, can

define its Fourier function .)

and this is the sampling theorem:

• if a function is zero outside of an interval of width ua, then its
Fourier transform is samples of the function’s Fourier
transform, spaced by 1/ua .

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• If you need knowledge of the transform in between the samples,
then you need to interpolate the samples. Care must be taken
here because the interpolating function governs the link between
the sampled spectrum and the “analogue spectrum”, and this
relationship is about aliasing. Usually the rectangular function is
used for one domain, leading to a sinc function interpolant for the
other (Fourier transform) domain. For example, a rectangular
spectrum leads to a sinc interpolant for the time domain, as
above, but if the frequency domain is not a rectanglar spectrum
(not possible in practice), then there is a problem.

• Homework: State the uncertainty principle for time-frequency

Fourier transform pairs

• Nyquist sampling rate: if we have a signal that is bandlimited to

between 0 and , then the minimum sampling rate is .

• Woodward’s pulse function is often written as a delta function,

and then Woodward’s sampling function becomes 1. This
reflects, for example, the infinite width of the spectrum for the
infinitesimal width of the sample, a dodgy proposition in practice.
However, the sampling equations now simplify completely, and
they can be found in any text or website on sampling.

• For example, if we have a time signal whose spectrum is zero

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 below 0 Hertz (no negative frequencies, this is a one sided
spectrum), and above Hertz, then the “acceptable”

sampling rate is known to be

samples per second.

• What does “acceptable” mean, here?

• Sketch the spectrum and the Nyquist sampling frequency

position.

• Sketch the time domain situation for the case when the spectral
entry is for a single frequency (here denoted with f ),

and the sampling is at the Nyquist frequency, .

Do you see a problem?

• Check out “bandpass sampling” and explain what it is. Draw an

example of the time waveform sampling and its spectra.

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