Universidade de Aveiro
Paulo J. S. G. Ferreira

Discrete Fourier transform

The subject of the papers in this section is the discrete Fourier transform.

The first paper describes a set of permutations that commute with the discrete Fourier transform. In other words, let x be a signal, and X its DFT. The permutations described in the paper have the following property: if x is permuted, the DFT of the permuted signal can be obtained by permuting the DFT X in a similar way.


P. J. S. G. Ferreira. A group of permutations that commute with the discrete Fourier transform. IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, vol. 42, no. 2, pp. 444-445, Feb. 1994.

ieee-tsp.jpg This paper characterizes a potentially useful set of permutation matrices that commute with the Fourier matrix. The set of all such permutation matrices is a group under matrix multiplication, and every element of the group is its own inverse. The number of these permutations as a function of the Fourier matrix order is studied. It is shown that it is a multiplicative function of the Fourier matrix size N.

How many such permutations exist? Express N as a product of primes,

2k0 p1k1 p2k2... prkr

The number of permutations is 2r, if k0 is zero or one, or 2r+1, if k0 is two, or 2r+2, if k0 is greater than or equal to three.


P. J. S. G. Ferreira. A note on the block sum transformation. Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 191-192, Mar. 1993.

mssp.png This note shows that the block sum transformation, a method intended as an alternative to the discrete Fourier transform (DFT), is equivalent to an existing algorithm.