Understanding discrete rotations

The concept of rotations in continuous-time, continuous-frequency is extended to discrete-time, discrete-frequency as it applies to the Wigner distribution. As in the continuous domain, discrete rotations are defined to be elements of the special orthogonal group over the appropriate (discrete) field. Use of this definition ensures that discrete rotations will share many of the same mathematical properties as continuous ones. A formula is given for the number of possible rotations of a prime-length signal, and an example is provided to illustrate what such rotations look like. In addition, by studying a 90 degree rotation, we formulate an algorithm to compute a prime-length discrete Fourier transform (DFT) based on convolutions and multiplications of discrete, periodic chirps. This algorithm provides a further connection between the DFT and the discrete Wigner distribution based on group theory