Negative Frequency - Sampling of Positive and Negative Frequencies and Aliasing

Sampling of Positive and Negative Frequencies and Aliasing

When a complex sinusoid is sampled at regular intervals, its frequency becomes indistinguishable from certain other frequencies, including negative ones (referred to as aliasing). The adjacent figure illustrates this effect for several cases. The red indicates 0 Hz (aka DC). Successively higher frequencies are indicated by orange, blue, purple, violet, black, and blue. Note that some frames depict "R" and "I" for the same frequency, and others depict the "I" samples of different frequencies that are aliases of each other.

For instance, the fourth frame (purple and green) compares samples of the imaginary component of the fractional frequency + with those of negative frequency, to illustrate that they are indistinguishable. Or in other words: for integer values of n, representing the sample number. The underlying waveforms are just the imaginary components of: and, where is the sample rate (samples/sec).

Likewise + is indistinguishable from . And (last plot) is indistinguishable from (first plot).


Read more about this topic:  Negative Frequency

Famous quotes containing the words positive and/or negative:

    “As for the terms good and bad, they indicate no positive quality in things regarded in themselves, but are merely modes of thinking, or notions which we form from the comparison of things with one another. Thus one and the same thing can be at the same time good, bad, and indifferent. For instance music is good for him that is melancholy, bad for him who mourns; for him who is deaf, it is neither good nor bad.”
    —Baruch (Benedict)

    “Our role is to support anything positive in black life and destroy anything negative that touches it. You have no other reason for being. I don’t understand art for art’s sake. Art is the guts of the people.”
    —Elma Lewis (b. 1921)