ELEC 241 Lab

Introduction

This week we are going to take a break from circuits (well, almost) and spend our time looking more closely at signals. We already have a number of parameters to characterize simple, periodic signals, such as amplitude, period, and waveshape. But we need a way to describe more complex signals, both periodic and non-periodic, other than by drawing pictures of them. The way we will do that is by Fourier analysis, specifically the Fourier Transform.

The formula for the Fourier Transform has an elegant simplicity to it, but actually trying to evaluate it, for other than very simple signals, is an exercise in extreme computation. Fortunately, computation is what computers excel at, so the idea of using the Lab PC to compute the Fourier Transform is an appealing, and fortunately, practical one.