Fourier transform, same frequencies, different amplitudes

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SUMMARY

The discussion centers on the behavior of the Fourier Transform (FT) when dealing with sine waves of similar frequencies but different amplitudes. It is established that in the context of the FT, signals with identical frequencies but varying amplitudes can be summed together, as the Fourier Transform is a linear operator. For discrete Fourier Transforms (DFT), "similar" frequencies are those that fall within the same frequency bin, while for continuous Fourier Transforms, they must be exact. The clarity provided by participants confirms that different amplitudes do affect the resulting frequency peaks in the FT visualization.

PREREQUISITES
  • Understanding of Fourier Transform concepts
  • Familiarity with sine wave properties
  • Knowledge of discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) vs. continuous Fourier Transform
  • Basic grasp of linear operators in signal processing
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  • Study the mathematical properties of linear operators in signal processing
  • Explore the differences between discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) and continuous Fourier Transform
  • Learn about frequency binning in discrete Fourier Transforms
  • Investigate the implications of amplitude variations on signal representation in the frequency domain
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Signal processing engineers, data scientists, and anyone involved in analyzing or visualizing frequency domain representations of signals will benefit from this discussion.

Behrouz
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I understand that the Fourier transform is changing the domain (time/space) to frequency domain and provides the sin waves. I have seen the visualizations of Fourier transform and they are all showing the transform results as the list of frequencies and their amplitude. My question is, what if the result has same sin waves with similar frequencies, but different amplitudes; are they going to be summed up (added/subtracted) in the final result?
 
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It is not really clear to me what your question is. Do you mean to ask what is the difference between two functions whose FTs differ by some constant or how different amplitudes in the same FT affect the result?
 
Orodruin said:
It is not really clear to me what your question is. Do you mean to ask what is the difference between two functions whose FTs differ by some constant or how different amplitudes in the same FT affect the result?
Thanks.
I mean the effect of different amplitudes (for similar frequencies) in the same FT.
 
Behrouz said:
Thanks.
I mean the effect of different amplitudes (for similar frequencies) in the same FT.
Sorry, but this is still not clear. If you have sine waves of different frequencies, each will lead to a peak at the corresponding frequency, the height of that peak will correspond to the amplitude of the sine wave, but the fact that frequencies are similar or not plays no role here.

Or are you talking about discrete Fourier transforms?
 
Two FTs with identical frequencies, but different amplitudes are associated with different signals in the time domain. If two time-domain signals are combined, their FTs can be added, frequency by frequency, to get the FT of the combined time-domain signal. That is because the FT is a linear operator.
 
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Behrouz said:
what if the result has same sin waves with similar frequencies, but different amplitudes; are they going to be summed up (added/subtracted) in the final result?

My short answer is yes.

My longer answer is that for a discrete FT similar means close enough to be in the same bin. For continuous FT, similar means exact.
 
Thank you all.
No, it wasn't specifically for DFT.
I believe @FactChecker 's answer is what I was looking for in this case.
Thanks again.
 

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