18 December 2013

Leaner Fourier Transforms

The fast Fourier transform (FFT), one of the most important algorithms of the 20th century, revolutionized signal processing. The algorithm allowed computers to quickly perform Fourier transforms (fundamental operations that separate signals into their individual frequencies) leading to developments in audio and video engineering and digital data compression. But ever since its development in the 1960s, computer scientists have been searching for an algorithm to better it.


Last year MIT researchers did just that, unveiling an algorithm that in some circumstances can perform Fourier transforms hundreds of times more quickly than the FFT. Recently, researchers within the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), have gone a step further, significantly reducing the number of samples that must be taken from a given signal in order to perform a Fourier transform operation.

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