Alternative to fourier transform

[Rene Tschaggelar]

There was this alternative to the FFT being mentioned a
few months ago. It was to be continous in time and not
blockwise.
As I remember, it was said to be advantageous in cases
where 499.9Hz and 500Hz are to be resolved.
I lost the reference to it, a name would be sufficient.

Rene

 

[Tim Wescott]

There was this alternative to the FFT being mentioned a
few months ago. It was to be continous in time and not
blockwise.
As I remember, it was said to be advantageous in cases
where 499.9Hz and 500Hz are to be resolved.
I lost the reference to it, a name would be sufficient.

Rene

If you're only trying to distinguish between those two frequencies then
a plain old IIR bandpass filter would probably be appropriate.

 

[Active8]

There was this alternative to the FFT being mentioned a
few months ago. It was to be continous in time and not
blockwise.
As I remember, it was said to be advantageous in cases
where 499.9Hz and 500Hz are to be resolved.
I lost the reference to it, a name would be sufficient.

Wavelet?

 

[Rich Webb]

There was this alternative to the FFT being mentioned a
few months ago. It was to be continous in time and not
blockwise.
As I remember, it was said to be advantageous in cases
where 499.9Hz and 500Hz are to be resolved.
I lost the reference to it, a name would be sufficient.

The Goertzel algorithm perhaps?

http://www.embedded.com/story/OEG20020819S0057

 

[Tim Shoppa]

It depends on what you're doing.

If the signal has no noise and well-defined zero crossings, just
measuring the period will tell you whether you've got 499.9Hz or 500Hz
in a single cycle. (Or half-cycle if you guarantee a square wave).

If other frequencies are present and/or noise etc., but you still have
to measure the amplitudes at a small number of frequencies (your
example named two, other applications like DTMF might have 8), then IIR
bandpass filters work nicely and you don't have to do Fourier at all.

Fourier is nice and all that if you really need to know amplitude and
phase for each and every bin, but most applications simply don't need
anything like that and are easily satisfied with a miniscule amount of
computational horsepower.

Tim.

 

[Mikko Kiviranta]

There was this alternative to the FFT being mentioned a
few months ago. It was to be continous in time and not
blockwise.
As I remember, it was said to be advantageous in cases
where 499.9Hz and 500Hz are to be resolved.
I lost the reference to it, a name would be sufficient.

The Maximum Entropy method? Lomb periodogram? (Just
wild guesses).

http://www.library.cornell.edu/nr/cbookcpdf.html

Regards,
Mikko

 

[Martin Riddle]

Yes, the Goertzel algoorthim. Can be used for DTMF decoding, if thats what the OP had in mind. An issue of Embedded Systems had a
great article on it.

Cheers

 

[Don Lancaster]

There was this alternative to the FFT being mentioned a
few months ago. It was to be continous in time and not
blockwise.
As I remember, it was said to be advantageous in cases
where 499.9Hz and 500Hz are to be resolved.
I lost the reference to it, a name would be sufficient.

Rene

wavelets.
http://www.tinaja.com/wave01.asp

--
Many thanks,

Don Lancaster
Synergetics 3860 West First Street Box 809 Thatcher, AZ 85552
voice: (928)428-4073 email: [email protected]

Please visit my GURU's LAIR web site at http://www.tinaja.com

 

[Mac]

There was this alternative to the FFT being mentioned a
few months ago. It was to be continous in time and not
blockwise.
As I remember, it was said to be advantageous in cases
where 499.9Hz and 500Hz are to be resolved.
I lost the reference to it, a name would be sufficient.

Rene

I don't remember the thread, but depending on what you are doing, you
might be able to just use a PLL. Jumps in the error voltage would
correspond to jumps in the signal frequency. If the jumps happen often
enough, and if the signal is guaranteed to spend equal time at the two
different frequencies, then you could compare the error voltage with a
smoothed copy of itself and get a digital output telling you which
frequency the signal was at.

If you have a stable local reference, you wouldn't even need the whole
PLL. You could just use the phase/frequency comparator, or whatever it is
called.

If this is a data transmission scheme, the equal time trait can be met by
using 8-bit to 10-bit encoding. This could also allow you to handle
framing with specific out of band 10-bit codes.

I'm making a lot of guesses and assumptions here, so if I am way off base,
just ignore me. ;-)

--Mac

 

[[email protected]]

The chirp-z transform can resolve between arbitrary frequency points.
This function is available in Matlab, otherwise code to do is posted on
the net.

Tom