Abstract: The spatial characteristics of head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) are studied by a spatial Fourier analysis. A law of the HRTF spatial sampling in different elevation planes is obtained, and the corresponding spatial interpolating method used to recover the continuous HRTF is proposed. The method is valid, for the average error between the measured and interpolated HRTFs in the horizontal plane is about 0.5%. These results provide guidance for the discrete spatial measurement of HRTFs.