Output frequency properties of nonlinear systems

Nonlinear systems usually have complicated output frequencies. For the class of Volterra systems, some interesting properties of the output frequencies are studied in this paper. These properties show theoretically the periodicity of the output super-harmonic and inter-modulation frequencies and clearly demonstrate the mechanism of the interaction between different output harmonics incurred by different input nonlinearities in system output spectrum. These new results have significance in the analysis and design of nonlinear systems and nonlinear filters in order to achieve a specific output spectrum in a desired frequency band by taking advantage of nonlinearities. Examples and discussions are given to illustrate these new results. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.