Periodic Interpolation (Spectral Zero Padding)

The dual of the zero-padding theorem states formally that zero padding in the frequency domain corresponds to periodic interpolation in the time domain:

Definition: For all and any integer ,

where zero padding is defined in §7.2.7 and illustrated in Figure 7.7. In other words, zero-padding a DFT by the factor in the frequency domain (by inserting zeros at bin number corresponding to the folding frequency^7.21) gives rise to ``periodic interpolation'' by the factor in the time domain. It is straightforward to show that the interpolation kernel used in periodic interpolation is an aliased sinc function, that is, a sinc function that has been time-aliased on a block of length . Such an aliased sinc function is of course periodic with period samples. See Appendix D for a discussion of ideal bandlimited interpolation, in which the interpolating sinc function is not aliased.

Periodic interpolation is ideal for signals that are periodic in samples, where is the DFT length. For non-periodic signals, which is almost always the case in practice, bandlimited interpolation should be used instead (Appendix D).

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Subsections

• Relation to Stretch Theorem
• Bandlimited Interpolation of Time-Limited Signals

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written by 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.