This question is related to this other question of mine where I ask for derivations of the discrete-time Fourier transform (DTFT) of the unit step sequence u[n]. During my search for derivations I found one which is amazingly simple. I first saw it on page 138 of this book by B.A. Shenoi. I also came across it on mathematics.SE in this answer.
Since the argument is short and simple I will repeat it here for convenience.
The unit step sequence can be written as u[n]=f[n]+12
with f[n]={12,n≥0−12,n<0Obviously, f[n]−f[n−1]=δ[n]Applying the DTFT on both sided of (3) gives F(ω)(1−e−jω)=1where F(ω) is the DTFT of f[n]. From (4) we get F(ω)=11−e−jωFrom (5) and (1) we get for the DTFT of u[n] U(ω)=F(ω)+πδ(ω)=11−e−jω+πδ(ω),−π≤ω<πwhere I've used DTFT{1}=2πδ(ω), −π≤ω<π.
Eq. (6) for the DTFT of u[n] is no doubt correct. However, the derivation is flawed.
The question is: find and explain the flaw in above derivation.
Please prepend your answer with the spoiler tag >!
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Answer
There are infinitely many signals that make the following equality hold: y[n]−y[n−1]=δ[n](1)
The only thing that matters is that y[0]−y[−1]=1, and then the rest of the coefficients of y can be determined under the restriction that Eq. (1) states (i.e. the substraction of consecutive samples must be 0 for n≠0). In other words, Eq. (1) will be achieved by any signal y[n] such that y[0]=y[−1]+1∧y[n]=y[n−1] ∀n≠0Another way to see this is that any function that is basically u[n] with an offset (a constant value added) will satisfy (1). This explains the statement made by robert bristow-johnson in his answer: differentiators destroy this information (such as taking a derivative in continuous time destroys evidence of any constant value in the original function).To sum up, I believe that the proof is flawed because the procedure followed could use any function of the form u[n]+C with C∈R, and this would lead to many functions having the same Fourier transform, which is indeed wrong as the Fourier transform is a bijection. Maybe the author deliberately decided to ignore anything related to DC values, conscious that in order to show that F(ω) is the DTFT of f[n] he would need the accumulation property (whose most popular proof is derived from the DTFT of the unit step - ergo, a pretty circular proof). The proof is not strictly wrong, as everything it states (the formulae for F(ω) and U(ω), the decomposition of the unit step, the difference equation) is true, but it would require the accumulation property to show why F(ω) doesn't have any Dirac deltas.
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