Inverse Fourier transform of windowed cosine

fourier analysisfourier transformsignal processing

Find the inverse Fourier transform of $$f \mapsto \frac 12 \left( 1 + \cos(\pi f) \right) \text{rect} \left( \frac{f}{2} \right)$$ where rect is a rectangular pulse that is $1$ from $[-1/2, 1/2]$ and $0$ elsewhere.


So far, I broke it up into $$\frac 12\text{rect}(\frac{f}{2}) + 1/2\cos(\pi f)\text{rect}(\frac{f}{2})$$

I know the inverse Fourier of the rectangular pulse is $\text{sinc}(2t)$ but am unsure how to go with the cosine multiplied with it.

Best Answer

The Fourier transform is linear, so you can compute the $rect$ function that isn't multiplied by $cos$ by itself.

For the $rect$ * $cos$ term, remember that multiplication in the frequency domain is convolution in the time domain.

So $\mathscr F^{-1} (G(\omega)*F(\omega)) = \{g \ast f\}(t)$.

Consider $cos(pi \cdot f)$ and $rect(f/2)$ as $G(\omega)$ and $F(\omega)$ respectively. Take the inverse Fourier transforms of $G$ and $F$ separately. Then, try plugging $g(t)$ and $f(t)$ into the convolution definition.