Dynamic Harmonic Analysis Through Taylor–Fourier Transform

A new dynamic harmonic estimator is presented as an extension of the fast Fourier transform (FFT), which assumes a fluctuating complex envelope at each harmonic. This estimator is able to estimate harmonics that are time varying inside the observation window. The extension receives the name “Taylor–Fourier transform (TFT)” since it is based on the McLaurin series expansion of each complex envelope. Better estimates of the dynamic harmonics are obtained due to the fact that the Fourier subspace is contained in the subspace generated by the Taylor–Fourier basis. The coefficients of the TFT have a physical meaning: they represent instantaneous samples of the first derivatives of the complex envelope, with all of them calculated at once through a linear transform. The Taylor–Fourier estimator can be seen as a bank of maximally flat finite-impulse-response filters, with the frequency response of ideal differentiators about each harmonic frequency. In addition to cleaner harmonic phasor estimates under dynamic conditions, among the new estimates are the instantaneous frequency and first derivatives of each harmonic. Two examples are presented to evaluate the performance of the proposed estimator.