Fractional Fourier Transform

In mathematics, in the area of harmonic analysis, the fractional Fourier transform (FRFT) is a linear transformation generalizing the Fourier transform. It can be thought of as the Fourier transform to the n-th power where n need not be an integer — thus, it can transform a function to an intermediate domain between time and frequency. Its applications range from filter design and signal analysis to phase retrieval and pattern recognition.

The FRFT can be used to define fractional convolution, correlation, and other operations, and can also be further generalized into the linear canonical transformation (LCT). An early definition of the FRFT was given by Namias, but it was not widely recognized until it was independently reinvented around 1993 by several groups of researchers. Since then, there has been a surge of interest in extending Shannon's sampling theorem for signals which are bandlimited in Fractional Fourier domain.

A completely different meaning for "fractional Fourier transform" was introduced by Bailey and Swartztrauber as essentially another name for a z-transform, and in particular for the case that corresponds to a discrete Fourier transform shifted by a fractional amount in frequency space (multiplying the input by a linear chirp) and evaluating at a fractional set of frequency points (e.g. considering only a small portion of the spectrum). (Such transforms can be evaluated efficiently by Bluestein's FFT algorithm.) This terminology has fallen out of use in most of the technical literature, however, in preference to the FRFT. The remainder of this article describes the FRFT.

See also the chirplet transform for a related generalization of the Fourier transform.