Spectrum Analyzer in Matlab

MATLAB Exercise

Since the DFT is a sampled version of the spectrum of a digital signal, it has certain sampling effects. To explore these sampling effects more thoroughly, we consider the effect of multiplying the time signal by different window functions and the effect of using zero-padding to increase the length (and thus the number of sample points) of the DFT. Using the following MATLAB script as an example, plot the squared-magnitude response of the following test cases over the digital frequencies ω_c=[

π

8

 ,

3π

8

 ].

1. rectangular window with no zero-padding
2. hamming window with no zero-padding
3. rectangular window with zero-padding by factor of four (i.e., 1024-point FFT)
4. hamming window window with zero-padding by factor of four

Window sequences can be generated in MATLAB by using the boxcar and hamming functions.

 
 1  N = 256;                % length of test signals
 2  num_freqs = 100;        % number of frequencies to test
 3
 4  % Generate vector of frequencies to test
 5
 6  omega = pi/8 + [0:num_freqs-1]'/num_freqs*pi/4;
 7
 8  S = zeros(N,num_freqs);                 % matrix to hold FFT results
 9
 10
 11  for i=1:length(omega)                   % loop through freq. vector
 12     s = sin(omega(i)*[0:N-1]');          % generate test sine wave
 13     win = boxcar(N);                     % use rectangular window
 14     s = s.*win;                          % multiply input by window
 15     S(:,i) = (abs(fft(s))).^2;           % generate magnitude of FFT
 16                                          % and store as a column of S
 17  end
 18
 19  clf;
 20  plot(S);                                % plot all spectra on same graph
 21
 
      

Make sure you understand what every line in the script does. What signals are plotted?

You should be able to describe the tradeoff between mainlobe width and sidelobe behavior for the various window functions. Does zero-padding increase frequency resolution? Are we getting something for free? What is the relationship between the DFT, X[k], and the DTFT, X(ω), of a sequence x[n]?