Idiots Guide to Continuous-Time Convolution

Convolution is complicated and often messy. You need to be very careful to make it come out correctly. It pays to draw accurate diagrams and follow a step-by-step procedure to eliminate (or at least reduce) errors. If you follow the steps below, it should help considerably. Consider the following problem of convolving x(t ) with h(t ) :
y (t ) = x( )h(t )d

1. Sketch the function x( ) . Note that is the independent variable here. It is easy to get confused between t and . 2. Sketch the function h( ) . Note that this is the same as h(t ) except that you are using instead of t . 3. Sketch the function h( ) . This is just the original function h( ) reflected about the y-axis. Also note that this is the function h(t ) when t = 0 . Important: Since the function is plotted with respect to , t acts like a constant (as far as the integration is concerned). Changing the value of t will simply shift the function around in the usual way that constants shift functions. 4. Now sketch the function h(t ) . Note that positive values of t will make the function shift to the right. This is because this plot has been rotated about the y-axis. You can now draw the general graph of h(t ) by using the graph of h( ) and adding n to all the values along the -axis. I sometimes include a note to myself indicating with an arrow that increasing t shifts the plot to the right. 5. You now need to think about multiplying the function you drew in step 1 with the function you drew in step 4. Of course, when you multiply two functions and one of them is zero over a particular region, the result will be zero over this same region. Hence, the

function that goes to zero will usually be the controlling function that defines the edge of the product. 6. Slide the function in step 4 to the left over the function in step 1 until there is no overlap (if possible). Determine how much you needed to slide this function (what value of t shifted the function sufficiently). For all values of t that are smaller than this, the result is zero (since the overlap is zero). 7. Now shift the function in part 4 so that overlap occurs. Write an integral that describes the product of the two functions, paying special attention to the starting and ending points of the integral. If the edge of the function in part 1 defines the edge of the product, the limit will be a constant (given by the location of the edge in part 1). If the edge of the product is given by the function in part 4 (the function that is shifting), then the limit will be given by the limit on this function, which is a function of t . Making sure you have these limits correct is the hardest part, and can often be tricky. 8. Once you have the integral established with the proper limits, it is a simple matter to integrate the result. 9. You need to repeat this procedure for different sections of the overlapping functions if shifting by t makes the controlling edge change. 10. When you are all finished, you should be able to stitch the sections together to make a continuous function. You can check to see if you are correct by insuring that the values calculated for the right and left sides of each section match with their corresponding sections.