We assume that the vector x contains discrete observations from a diffusion
process following the Ito stochastic differential equation
dx(t)= \sigma(t) \ dW(t) + b(t) \ dt,
where W is a Brownian motion defined on the filtered probability space (\Omega, (\mathcal{F}_t)_{t \in [0,T]}, P),
while \sigma and b are random processes, adapted to \mathcal{F}_t.
See the Reference for further mathematical details.
The spot volatility of the process x at time t \in [0,T] is defined as V(t):=\sigma^2(t).
For any positive integer n, let \mathcal{S}_{n}:=\{ 0=t_{0}\leq \cdots
\leq t_{n}=T \} be the observation times. Moreover, let \delta_l(x):=
x(t_{l+1})-x(t_l) be the increments of x.
The Fourier estimator of the spot volatility at time t \in [0,T] is
given by
\widehat V_{n,N,M}(\tau)= \sum_{|k|\leq M} \left(1-{|k|\over
M}\right)c_k(\sigma_{n,N}) \, e^{{\rm i}\frac{2\pi}{T}k\tau},
where:
c_k(\sigma_{n,N})={T\over {2N+1}} \sum_{|s|\leq N} c_{s}(dx_{n})c_{k-s}(dx_{n}),
c_k(dx_{n})= {1\over {T}} \sum_{l=0}^{n-1} e^{-{\rm i}\frac{2\pi}{T}kt_l}\delta_{l}(x).