Split-Radix FFT Algorithms
An inspection of the radix-2 decimation-in-frequency flowgraph shown in Figure TC.3.8 indicates that the even-numbered pints of the DFT can be computed independently of the odd-numbered points. This suggests teh possibility of using different computational methods for independent parts of the algorithm, with the objective of reducing the number of computations. The split-radix FFT (SRFFT) algorithms exploit this idea by using both a radix-2 and a radix-4 decomposition in the same FFT algorithm.
First, we recall that in the radix-2 decimation-in-frequency FFT algorithm, the even-numbered samples of the N-point DFT are given as
A radix-2 suffices for this computation.
The odd-numbered samples {X(2k+1)} of the DFT require the pre-multiplication of the input sequence with the twiddle factors WNn. For these samples a radix-4 decomposition produces some computational efficiency because the four-point DFT has the largest multiplication-free butterfly. Indeed, it can be shown that using a radix greater than 4 does not result in a significant reduction in computational complexity.
If we use a radix-4 decimation-in-frequency FFT algorithm for the odd-numbered samples of the N-point DFT, we obtain the following N/4-point DFTs: