SIViP (2010) 4:377379

DOI 10.1007/s11760-009-0127-2
ORIGINAL PAPER
Fractional Laplace transform
K. K. Sharma
Received: 9 February 2009 / Revised: 23 July 2009 / Accepted: 27 July 2009 / Published online: 12 August 2009
Springer-Verlag London Limited 2009
Abstract A new definition of the fractional Laplace trans-
form is proposed as a special case of the complex linear
canonical transform. The proposed fractional Laplace trans-
form reduces to the conventional bilateral Laplace transform
and the fractional Fourier transformexactly and hence is bet-
ter suited for the definition of the fractional Laplace trans-
form as compared to the other definitions proposed earlier
in the literature. The advantage of the proposed transform as
compared to the conventional Laplace transform lies in pro-
viding a free parameter which can be effectively exploited in
the ltering and signal separation problems.
Keywords Fractional Fourier transform Fractional
Laplace transform Linear canonical transform
1 Introduction
The connections between the Laplace transform (LT), con-
ventional Fourier transform (CFT), and linear canonical
transformare well known and can be easily referred in [13].
To be precise, for a function f (t ) that is identically zero for
t < 0, the one-sided Laplace transform of the function f (t )
is identical to the CFT of the function f (t )e
t
where is
some real constant. Moreover, the Laplace transform may
exist for some signals that are not Fourier transformable [1].
For causal signals, the CFT can be obtained from its LT by
substituting = 0 in the LT variable s = + j , i.e.,
replacing s = j . It is also well known that the complex
linear canonical transform (LCT) [2] reduces to the bilateral
K. K. Sharma (B)
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering,
Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur, India
e-mail: kksharma_mrec@yahoo.com
LT within a complex constant when the parameter values in
the LCT are chosen as L = [0, j ; j, 0].
Recently, the fractional Laplace transform(FLT) F
L,
(u
L
)
of a signal f (t ) has been obtained as the fractional operation
of the offset Fourier transform and is dened as [4]
F
L,
(u
L
) =
_
1 j cot
2
exp
_
j 2

2
_
exp
_
j u
2
L
2
cot +u
L
_

f (t )
exp
_
j
2
t
2
cot
_
exp
_
j u
L
t
sin
t
_
dt, (1)
where u
L
= + j denotes the complex FLT variable.
This definition, however, does not reduce to the conven-
tional LT exactly for = /2. The FLT proposed in [5] by
applying a similarity transformation to the fractional Fou-
rier transform (FRFT) [6, 7] matrix using a dilation matrix
is equivalent to LCT operation with parameter matrix
M = [cos , j sin ; j sin , cos ] and is reproduced below
as [5, Eqn. (19)]
F
L,
(u
L
) =
_
1 j cot
2j
exp
_
u
2
L
cot
2
_

f (t ) exp
_
t
2
cot
2
_
exp
_
u
L
t
sin
_
dt. (2)
However, this definition does not reduce to the FRFT when
the real part of the transform variable u
L
= + j is set to
zero, i.e., = 0.
In this paper, we propose a slightly different definition
of the FLT that reduces exactly to the conventional LT (for
= /2), and the FRFT(for = 0) just as the conventional
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378 SIViP (2010) 4:377379
LT reduces to the CFT. The paper is organized as follows. In
Sect. 2, we present the new definition of the FLT along with
application examples. The paper is concluded in Sect. 3.
2 The fractional Laplace transform
The LCTof a signal f (t ) with parameter matrix M = [A, B;
C, D], denoted as F
M
(u), is given by [6, 8]:
F
M
(u) =

_
1
j 2B
f (t )K
M
(t, u)dt, B = 0

D exp( j CDu
2
/2) f (Du), B = 0
, (3)
where K
M
(t, u) = exp[
j
2
(
D
B
u
2
2
1
B
ut +
A
B
t
2
)], B = 0,
and the determinant of the matrix M satises the relation
ADBC = 1. For the specic value of the parameter matrix
M = [ j cos , j sin ; j sin , j cos ] in (3), it reduces to
F
M
(u) =
_
1
2 sin
exp
_
j
2
u
2
cot
_

f (t ) exp
_
j
2
t
2
cot
_
exp
_
ut
sin
_
dt. (4)
Equation (4) can be used to dene the bilateral FLT as it
reduces to the conventional bilateral LT for the specic value
of the parameter = /2 within a complex constant. Thus,
we propose to dene the FLT of a signal f (t ), denoted as
F
L,
(u
L
), using the equation that differs from (4) within a
complex constant only as given by
F
L,
(u
L
) =
_
1 j cot
2
exp
_
j
2
u
2
L
cot
_

f (t ) exp
_
j
2
t
2
cot
_
exp
_
u
L
t
sin
_
dt, (5)
where u
L
= + j denotes the complex FLT variable.
The FLT in (5) reduces to the FRFT [6] when = 0. The
ROCof the proposed FLT in (5) is the values of u
L
for which
the FRFTof the signal f (t )e
t csc
exists. Note that the FLT
proposed in (5) is different from that given in (1) and (2).
Moreover, the index additivity and inverse property of the
fractional Laplace transformin (3) follows immediately from
the similar properties of the LCT mentioned in [6]. The other
properties of the FLT based on (5) can be obtained from the
properties of the LCT given in [2], [6, pp. 97], by replac-
ing the LCT parameter values corresponding to the FLT. We
mention some of the properties of the FLT here in Table 1
for ready reference.
The inverse FLT can be easily obtained from the relation
(5) by replacing . The inverse FLT can also be
expressed, following the steps to obtain the inverse LT in [1],
Table 1 Properties of the FLT
Signal FLT of the signal
f (t ) F
L,
(u
L
)
f (t ) F
L,
(u
L
)
f (t ) exp
_
j

2
2
cos sin u
L
sin
_
F
L,
(u
L
j cos )
exp( j vt ) f (t ) exp
_
j
v
2
2
cos sin u
L
v cos
_
F
L,
(u
L
j sin v)
t
n
f (t ) [j cos u
L
sin d/du
L
]
n
F
L,
(u
L
)
[( j 2)
1
d/dt ]
n
f (t ) [j sin u
L
+cos d/du
L
]
n
F
L,
(u
L
)
as
f (t ) =
_
1 + j cot
2
exp
_
j t
2
cot
2
_

+j
_
j
F
L,
(u
L
) exp
_
j u
2
L
cot
2
_
exp
_
u
L
t
sin
_
du
L
.
(6)
Equation (6) can be simplied to
f (t ) =
_
1 + j cot
2
exp
_
j t
2
cot
2
_

+j
_
j
F
L,
(u sin ) exp
_
j u
2
sin 2
4
_
exp (ut )du. (7)
Here, the contour of integration in (6) and (7) will be any line
in the ROC parallel to the j axis such that e(u) = . It
may be mentioned that the evaluation of (7) requires the use
of contour integration in the complex plane and the Cauchy
residue theorem can also be used to advantage. The other
properties of the ROC for different types of signals can be
obtained similar to the properties of the ROC of the LT given
in [1].
Now, we present some simple examples of the application
of the proposed FLT in signal separation problems and in the
solution of differential equations. The additional parameters
in the proposed FLT may prove to be handy here.
Example 1 Consider the signal f (t )+e
j (t
2
cot )/2
e
kt cos ec
,
which is sum of two signals f (t ) and e
j (t
2
cot )/2
e
kt cos ec
.
The signal e
j (t
2
cot )/2
e
kt cos ec
can be separated from the
rst term f (t ) by taking the FLT of it using (5) because the
second term will become a generalized Dirac-delta function
[9] (u
L
k), (also known as Xi generalized impulse) within
a complex constant in the FRLT domain, which can be l-
tered from the FRLT of the rst term easily. The generalized
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SIViP (2010) 4:377379 379
Dirac-delta function is dened as [9]
(u
L
) =
1
2

e
u
L
t
dt.
It may be noted the two signals in this example cannot be
separated from each other using conventional FRFT domain
ltering easily.
Example 2 We next present one example of the application
of the proposed transform in solving the differential equa-
tions. Consider differential equation given below:
y

+ j t y = e
j (t
2
cot )/2
e
kt cos ec
. (8)
Upon taking the FRLT of (8) on both sides and using the
properties of the FLT given in Table 1, we obtain
_
u
L
Y
L,
(u
L
) sin + j cos
dY
L,
(u
L
)
du
L
_
+
_
u
L
Y
L,
(u
L
) cos j sin
dY
L,
(u
L
)
du
L
_
=(u
L
k).
(9)
Now, if the values of the parameters of the FLT are so chosen
that cos = sin , then the coefcients of the term
dY
L,
(u
L
)
du
L
in (9) becomes zero and it reduces to
Y
L,
(u
L
) =
1
2k sin
(u
L
k). (10)
The inverse FLT of (10) gives us the solution of (8) as
y(t ) =
1
2k sin
e
j (t
2
cot )/2
e
kt cos ec
.
The applications of the FLT in the design and analysis of the
control systems and other applications remain to be investi-
gated.
3 Conclusion
A new definition of the fractional Laplace transform is pro-
posed that suits better as a definition than the other definitions
proposedinthe literature. The exploitationof the FLTinother
signal processing applications remains to be investigated.
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