Quadratic residues: Application to chirp filters and discrete Fourier transforms

A complete solution is given to the problem of finding the number of distinct quadratic residues for a composite modulus. Two specific applications of this result are described. The first one concerns the efficient implementation of chirp filters. It is shown that by an optimum choice of the number of taps, the number of multiplications required to realize a transversal chirp filter can be greatly reduced. Secondly, an algorithm for the computation of DFT, based on chirp filtering, is discussed. It has the potential of being faster than the FFT in certain cases and, in addition, requires less storage for the sine-cosine values.