I am a new radio ham with general license and is trying to dive into antenna theory. As the question suggests, I want to know more about fourier transform. With all the resources I can find on the internet, no one seemed to be able to explain it in layman’s terms without showing shitty formulas that I don’t understand. I would like someone to explain fourier transform with little math as possible, or teach me any math concepts involved.
What is fourier transform? How does it work? How is the formulas derived? What are its appliations in communication antennas?
In: Engineering
The Fourier Transform is a mathematical way to take a time-varying waveform and convert it into a set of frequencies.
You can take almost any periodic (repeating) signal and recreate it or closely approximate it by adding up a bunch of sine waves (or cosine waves) of different amplitudes and phases. The Fourier Transform is the math to figure out what those are. So we say that the FT converts a signal from the “time domain” to the “frequency domain”. It’s kind of like what a frequency analyzer does, if you are familiar with those.
And even most non-periodic signals can also have the FT applied, but the combination of sine waves used may also need to change over time.
In antenna theory, the FT can be used to help do the math to figure out the antenna radiation pattern as a function of the angle with respect to the antenna. But it’s a lot of math, and not really that necessary for a beginner or general ham user.
If you are really determined to learn how this works, you’re going to want to learn calculus. I can’t teach you that in a reddit post.
Latest Answers