13.8 RATE OF DECAY OF HARMONIC AMPLITUDE

Fourier series is an infinite series. It requires infinite number of sinusoids with frequencies ranging from fundamental frequency to infinitely large frequency to synthesise a non-sinusoidal periodic waveform in general. There may be special cases where the Fourier series terminates at some finite harmonic order but they are only special cases.

This indicates that we have to find the AC steady-state response of the circuit to each and every component in Fourier series of input and sum them up to get the periodic steady-state response of the circuit. That calls for infinite computation - we will not get done with it. Hence, the issue of rate of decay of harmonic amplitudes is of practical significance ...

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