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Continuous-Time Aliasing Theorem

Let denote any continuous-time signal having a Fourier Transform (FT)

Let

denote the samples of at uniform intervals of seconds, and denote its Discrete-Time Fourier
Transform (DTFT) by

Then the spectrum of the sampled signal is related to the spectrum of the original continuous-time
signal by

The terms in the above sum for are called aliasing terms. They are said to alias into the base band
. Note that the summation of a spectrum with aliasing components involves addition of complex
numbers; therefore, aliasing components can be removed only if both their amplitude and phase are known.

Proof: Writing as an inverse FT gives

Writing as an inverse DTFT gives

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Continuous-Time Aliasing Theorem http://ccrma-www.stanford.edu/~jos/st/Continuous_Time_Aliasing_Theo...

where denotes the normalized discrete-time frequency variable.

The inverse FT can be broken up into a sum of finite integrals, each of length , as

follows:

Let us now sample this representation for at to obtain , and we have

since and are integers. Normalizing frequency as yields

Since this is formally the inverse DTFT of written in terms of , the result follows.

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[How to cite this work] [Order a printed hardcopy]

``Mathematics of the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT), with Audio Applications --- Second Edition'', by Julius O. Smith III,
W3K Publishing, 2007, ISBN 978-0-9745607-4-8.
Copyright © 2008-05-20 by Julius O. Smith III
Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), Stanford University

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