Effect of fractional Fourier transformation on time-frequency distributions belonging to the Cohen class

Abstract

We consider the Cohen (1989) class of time-frequency distributions, which can be obtained from the Wigner distribution by convolving it with a kernel characterizing that distribution. We show that the time-frequency distribution of the fractional Fourier transform of a function is a rotated version of the distribution of the original function, if the kernel is rotationally symmetric. Thus, the fractional Fourier transform corresponds to rotation of a relatively large class of time-frequency representations (phase-space representations), confirming the important role this transform plays in the study of such representations.