DEFINITION OF THE FOURIER TRANSFORM
We saw in the previous chapter that a non sinusoidal periodic function can be represented by a Fourier series, provided that it satisfies the Dirichlet conditions. What happens if a function is not periodic? Unfortunately,there are many important non periodic functions—such as a unit step or an exponential function—that we cannot represent by a Fourier series.
As we shall see, the Fourier transform allows a transformation from the time to the frequency domain, even if the function is not periodic.