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Shifts and phase changes
Section 7.2 showed how
time-shifting a signal changes the phases of its sinusoidal
components, and Section 8.4.3 showed how
multiplying a signal by a complex sinusoid shifts its component
frequencies. These two effects correspond to identities involving
the Fourier transform.
First we consider a time shift. If
, as usual,
is a complex-valued signal that repeats every
samples, let
be
delayed
samples:
which also repeats every
samples since
does. We can reduce the Fourier transform of
this way:
We therefore get the Time Shift Formula for Fourier Transforms:
So the Fourier transform of
is a phase term
times the Fourier transform of
. The phase is
changed by
, a linear function of the
frequency
.
Now suppose instead that we change our starting signal
by multiplying it by a complex
exponential
with angular frequency
:
The Fourier transform is:
We therefore get the Phase Shift Formula for Fourier Transforms:

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Miller Puckette 2006-09-05