IEEE SIGNAL PROCESSING LETTERS, VOL. 5, NO.

4, APRIL 1998

101

A Convolution and Product Theorem

for the Fractional Fourier Transform
Ahmed I. Zayed

AbstractThe fractional Fourier transform (FRFT), which is

a generalization of the Fourier transform, has many applications
in several areas, including signal processing and optics. In two
recent papers, Almeida and Mendlovic et al. derived fractional
Fourier transforms of a product and of a convolution of two
functions. Unfortunately, their convolution formulas do not generalize very nicely the classical result for the Fourier transform,
which states that the Fourier transform of the convolution of two
functions is the product of their Fourier transforms. The purpose
of this note is to introduce a new convolution structure for the
FRFT that preserves the convolution theorem for the Fourier
transform and is also easy to implement in the designing of filters.

Let
be that subspace of the space of all integrable
if and only if the
functions with the property that
Let and be in
Fourier transform of is also in
and denote their convolution by
, i.e.,
(2)
Then the fractional Fourier transform of , denoted by
is given by

Index Terms Convolution and product theorems, fractional

Fourier transform.

(3)

I. INTRODUCTION

HE fractional Fourier transform (FRFT) has become the

focus of many research papers in the last four years
because of its recent applications in many fields, including
optics and signal processing [2][6], [8], [9], [11], [12].
is defined as
The FRFT with angle of a signal
(1)

is the same
See [1, Eq. (5)]. It should be noted that the space
in Almeidas notation, where
is
as the space
the Wiener algebra consisting of functions that are Fourier
transforms of functions in
As for the FRFT of the product of two functions and
i.e.,
we have (cf., [1, Eq. (2)])

where we have the formulation shown on the bottom of the

next page, with

and

Throughout this paper the constants,

, and
will
denote these values, and for simplicity we may write them as
, and . The special cases where
, and yield the
following FRFT of
, where
denotes the ordinary Fourier
transform of . Therefore, from now on we shall confine our
for
.
attention to
Many properties of the FRFT are currently well known,
including its product and convolution theorems, which have
recently been derived by Almeida [1]. His main result reads
as follows.
Manuscript received November 30, 1997. The associate editor coordinating
the review of this manuscript and approving it for publication was Prof. A.
Tewfik.
The author is with the Department of Mathematics, University of Central
Florida, Orlando, FL 32816 USA (e-mail: zayed@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu).
Publisher Item Identifier S 1070-9908(98)02847-8.

(4)
Unlike the convolution theorem for the Fourier transform,
which states that the Fourier transform of the convolution of
two functions is the product of their Fourier transforms, the
one for the FRFT does not seem as nice or as practical. The
reason, in our opinion, is that the convolution operation defined
by (2) is not the right sort of convolution for the FRFT. In the
general framework of convolution theory (see [13, Ch. 4]), it
is known that to every integral transformation , one can, at
least theoretically, associate with it a convolution operation,
, such that
(5)
For example, the convolution operation associated with the
Hankel transform is too complicated to be stated here, but the
interested reader can find the details in [13, Sect. 21.6].
In this letter, we propose a new convolution structure for
the FRFT that is different from those introduced in [1] and [7].
Unlike those introduced in [1] and [7], ours preserves property
(5) and is easier to implement, in particular, in filter design.

10709908/98$10.00 1998 IEEE

102

IEEE SIGNAL PROCESSING LETTERS, VOL. 5, NO. 4, APRIL 1998

By making the change of variable,

, we obtain

Fig. 1. Convolution for the FRFT.

II. CONVOLUTION THEOREM

Let us introduce the following definition.
, let us define the
Definition 1: For any function
functions
and
by
and
For any two functions and , we define the
convolution operation by

and this completes the proof of (6). As for (7), we have from
Definition 1

where is the convolution operation for the Fourier transform

as defined by (2). Likewise, we define the operation by
But from the definition of the FRFT, we obtain

See Fig. 1 for a realization of the convolution operation .

Now we state and prove our convolution theorem.
Theorem 1: Let
and
denote
the FRFT of
and , respectively. Then
(6)
Moreover
(7)

which, in view of the inversion formula for the FRFT, can be

reduced to

Proof: From the definition of the FRFT and Definition

1, we have

which is the same as (7).

Equation (6) is particularly useful in filter design. For
example, if we are interested only in the frequency spectrum
of a signal , we choose
of the FRFT in the region
is constant over
the filter impulse response, , so that
, and zero or of rapid decay outside that region. Passing
,
the output of the filter through the chirp multiplier,
over
. This is
yields that part of the spectrum of
clearly easier to implement than the one suggested in [1].

if
if
if
if

ZAYED: FRACTIONAL FOURIER TRANSFORM

Equation (7), which is the dual of (6), does not seem to have
an immediate application in signal processing, but products of
similar nature have proved to be useful in optics; see [10].
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1517, 1997.
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103

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