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Graphical Convolution
As mentioned above, cyclic convolution can be written as
where

and

. It is instructive to interpret this
expression
graphically, as depicted in Fig.
7.5 above. The
convolution result at time

is the
inner product of

and

, or

. For the next time instant,

, we shift

one sample to the right and repeat the
inner product operation to obtain

,
and so on. To capture the cyclic nature of the convolution,

and

can be imagined plotted on a
cylinder.
Thus, Fig.
7.5 shows the cylinder after being ``cut'' along the
vertical line between

and

and ``unrolled'' to lay flat.
Previous: Convolution Example 3: Matched FilteringNext: Polynomial Multiplication
About the Author: Julius Orion Smith III
Julius Smith's background is in electrical engineering (BS Rice 1975, PhD Stanford 1983). He is presently Professor of Music and Associate Professor (by courtesy) of Electrical Engineering at
Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), teaching courses and pursuing research related to signal processing applied to music and audio systems. See
http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/ for details.