Complex Sinusoids Archives | Page 3 of 4

Intuition behind multiplying two complex numbers

March 14, 2025 Wireless/SDR

Intuitive Reason behind Multiplication and Division of Complex Numbers

Any introduction to complex numbers and their operations follows a common pattern: the formulas are given without building any intuition. If you have ever wondered about why $j=\sqrt{-1}$, you can read about the origin of complex numbers. In this article, I will explain the intuitive reason behind why a product of two complex numbers multiplies their magnitudes and adds their angles, and a division of two complex numbers divides their magnitudes and subtracts their angles. Let us start with the multiplication. The division scenario can be analogously derived with inverse operations. Multiplication of Complex Numbers The intuition behind multiplying two

May 28, 2025 DSP

Two Birds with One Tone: I/Q Signals and Fourier Transform – Part 2

In Part 1 of I/Q signals series, we discussed in detail the orthogonality in phase and saw how this leads us to employing two carriers in wireless transmission systems. In Part 2, we talk about orthogonality in frequency and see how this leads us to the concept of Fourier Transform. A Basic Building Block We use the power of logic to uncover the rules according to which the world works. But our minds struggle to retain excessive amounts of information required to grasp the complex reality. Therefore, we like to reduce everything around us as a combination of some fundamental

Symbolic representation of linear phase rotation that changes with frequency index

May 14, 2019 DSP

Effect of Time Shift in Frequency Domain

Children usually ask questions like “How many hours have passed?” And they have no idea about the start time to be taken as a reference. Just like the zero of a measuring tape, a zero reference for time plays a crucial role in analyzing the signal behaviour in time and frequency domains. Until now, we assumed that reference time $0$ coincides with the start of a sine and a cosine wave to understand the frequency domain. Later, we will deal with symbol timing synchronization problem in single-carrier systems and carrier frequency synchronization problem in multicarrier systems, both of which address

December 22, 2017 DSP

Interpreting Time Domain Derivative in Frequency Domain

Although this article explains the concepts in terms of mathematical constants e and j as well as integration, my book on SDR steers clear of the complex notation and integrals to describe the underlying concepts from the ground up to an advanced level. One of the properties of Fourier Transform is that the derivative of a signal in time domain gets translated to multiplication of the signal spectrum by $j2\pi f$ in frequency domain. This property is usually derived as follows. For a signal $s(t)$ with Fourier Transform $S(f)$ \begin{equation*} s(t) = \frac{1}{2\pi}\int \limits _{-\infty}^{+\infty} S(f) e^{j2\pi ft}df, \end{equation*} we

Beat frequency sinusoid and its spectrum

October 31, 2023 DSP

Spectrum of a Sinusoid

In this article, we derive the spectrum of a complex sinusoid that acts as the basis for all spectra. In fact, the very definition of the Fourier Transform, whether continuous or discrete, comes from the perspective of a complex sinusoid. Therefore, exploring this derivation will be useful in everything else we learn about DSP. For an in-depth understanding of complex signals and I/Q processing, you can read the following two articles (the option of downloading them as PDF is available). The origin of complex numbers and signals I/Q signal processing Let us start with the continuous-time case. A Continuous-Time Sinusoid