The Fast Fourier Transform and its application to tidal oscillations

Abstract

This paper proposes a new way of tidal spectral analysis based on the Cooley-Tukey algorithm, known as the Fast Fourier Transform. The Fast Fourier Transform analysis is used to compute both the harmonic constants of the tide and the power spectrum.The latter is obtained by means of a weighted sum. A new way is also derived to obtain the formula giving the number of the degrees of freedom,on which is based the confi dence interval corresponding to the noise spectrum.