Like a
square wave, the triangle wave contains only odd
harmonics. However, the higher harmonics
roll off much faster than in a square wave (proportional to the inverse square of the harmonic number as opposed to just the inverse).
Definitions
Definition
A triangle wave of period p that spans the range [0, 1] is defined as
For example, for a triangle wave with amplitude 5 and period 4:
A phase shift can be obtained by altering the value of the term, and the vertical offset can be adjusted by altering the value of the term.
As this only uses the modulo operation and absolute value, it can be used to simply implement a triangle wave on hardware electronics.
Note that in many programming languages, the % operator is a remainder operator (with result the same sign as the dividend), not a
modulo operator; the modulo operation can be obtained by using ((x % p) + p) % p in place of x % p. In e.g. JavaScript, this results in an equation of the form 4*a/p * Math.abs((((x - p/4) % p) + p) % p - p/2) - a.
A triangle wave with period p and amplitude a can be expressed in terms of
sine and
arcsine (whose value ranges from −π/2 to π/2):
The identity can be used to convert from a triangle "sine" wave to a triangular "cosine" wave. This phase-shifted triangle wave can also be expressed with
cosine and
arccosine:
Expressed as alternating linear functions
Another definition of the triangle wave, with range from −1 to 1 and period p, is
Harmonics
It is possible to approximate a triangle wave with
additive synthesis by summing odd harmonics of the fundamental while multiplying every other odd harmonic by −1 (or, equivalently, changing its phase by π) and multiplying the amplitude of the harmonics by one over the square of their mode number, n (which is equivalent to one over the square of their relative frequency to the
fundamental).
The above can be summarised mathematically as follows:
where N is the number of harmonics to include in the approximation, t is the independent variable (e.g. time for sound waves), is the fundamental frequency, and i is the harmonic label which is related to its mode number by .
This infinite
Fourier series converges quickly to the triangle wave as N tends to infinity, as shown in the animation.
Arc length
The
arc length per period for a triangle wave, denoted by s, is given in terms of the amplitude a and period length p by