Misunderstanding of spectral leakage

1. Why is spectral leakage bad?
2. How do you deal with spectral leakage?
3. What causes spectral leakage in FFT?
4. What is leakage in spectral analysis?

Why is spectral leakage bad?

The bad news is that spectral leakage cannot be avoided in general. The energy in a signal associated with each frequency has to go somewhere in the DFT, and if the frequency does not correspond to one of our analysis frequencies, then it will spread out.

How do you deal with spectral leakage?

We have seen that spectral leakage is reduced by tapering the digital signal by a window function before the DFT takes place. A generalization of this technique is the short-time discrete Fourier transform (STDFT).

What causes spectral leakage in FFT?

Spectral leakage due to FFT is caused by: mismatch between desired tone and chosen frequency resolution, time limiting an observation. Understand the concept using hands-on examples.

What is leakage in spectral analysis?

Leakage, more explicitly called spectral leakage, is a smearing of power across a frequency spectrum that occurs when the signal being measured is not periodic in the sample interval.