Department of Electrical Engineering

Faculty Member: Dr. Mohaira Ahmad Dated: 25-02-21

Course/Section: BEE 11-B Semester: 4th

EE-232 Signals and Systems

Lab #1 Introduction to Matlab

Name: Ch. Muhammad Shaheer Yasir

Registration Number: 286021

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Lab1: Introduction to MATLAB

Objectives
This Lab experiment has been designed to familiarize students with MATLAB and basic
understanding of MATLAB commands

 How to use MATLAB interface

 Familiarization with Mathematical operators in MATLAB
 How to use MATLAB Help
 How to handle Matrices and Vectors in MATLAB
 How to make functions in MATLAB

Lab Report Instructions

All questions should be answered precisely to get maximum credit. Lab report must ensure following items:
 Lab objectives
 MATLAB codes
 Results (graphs/tables) duly commented and discussed
 Conclusion

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1 Familiarize yourself with MATLAB
Let us introduce MATLAB in windows environment. Front-end (Graphical user interface) of MATLAB is very easy
to use and is user friendly. Further it is compatible with standard windows applications and supports

 File operations
 Multiple windows view.
 help, demos and example (Check whether this component is installed)
 Wizard to create a GUI (graphical user interface)
 Wizard to profile code
 Toolboxes for different components like communication, control systems, data acquisition, curve fitting,
fuzzy logic, neural network etc. (These components may or may not be available, depending upon the
installation)

When MATLAB application is started, it looks like figure 1.

Figure 1: MATLAB Windows

Menu Current Directory Workspace window with variable details

Command Window

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WINDOW PURPOSE

Command Window To enter commands

Command History Window To see previous commands

Workspace window Provide information about the variables that are

used

Current Directory Window Shows the files in current directory

Launch pad window (Toolbox Menu) Provide access to tools and demos

Table 1: Description of common windows

There are other windows of MATLAB, which are equally important. Table 2 describes them in brief and
will be introduced later.
WINDOW PURPOSE

Help window Provides Help information

Editor window Text editor to write programs

Figure window Output of Graphical commands

Table 2: Description of other windows

1.1 Pre-Lab Tasks

1.1.1 The Command window
You can start MATLAB by double clicking on the MATLAB icon that should be on the desktop of your computer.
This brings up the window called the Command Window. This window allows a user to enter simple commands.
To clear the Command Window type clc and next press the Enter or Return key. PLEASE NOTE: that MATLAB
does not automatically remove variables from the command window if you are working. It is therefore preferable to
type clear all to remove previous variables before starting a new sequence of commands
To perform simple computations type a command and press the Enter or Return key. For instance,

s=1+2
will result in the output shown below,
s=3
Here s is the variable having the integer value 3.

fun = sin(pi/4)
fun = 0.7071

In the second example the trigonometric function sine and the constant π are used. In MATLAB they are named sin
and pi, respectively. Note that the results of these computations are saved in variables whose names are chosen by

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the user. If they will be needed during your current MATLAB session, then you can obtain their values typing their
names and pressing the Enter or Return key. For instance,
s
s=3

Variable name begins with a letter, followed by letters, numbers or underscores. MATLAB Release 2008 recognizes
only the first 63 characters of a variable name. To close MATLAB type exit in the Command Window and press
Enter or Return key. A second way to close your current MATLAB session is to select File in the MATLAB's
toolbar and next click on Exit MATLAB option. All unsaved information residing in the MATLAB Workspace
will be lost.

1.1.2 Numbers in MATLAB

There are three kinds of numbers used in MATLAB:
1. integers
2. real numbers
3. complex numbers

Integers are entered without the decimal point

x_int = 10
x_int = 10

However, the following number

x_real = 10.01
x_real = 10.0100

is saved as a real number. Please note that x_int and x_real are variable names and do not define the type of
numbers.

Functions realmin and realmax return the smallest and the largest positive real numbers in MATLAB. For instance
typing realmin returns the minimum number that can be represented or saved in as a real number.

realmin
ans = 2.2251e-308

Complex numbers in MATLAB are represented in rectangular coordinate form. The imaginary unit -1 is denoted
either by i or j. Typing either i or j results in

i
ans = 0 + 1.0000i

In addition to classes of numbers mentioned above, MATLAB has three variables representing the non-numbers:

-Inf
Inf
NaN

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The –Inf and Inf are the IEEE representations for the negative and positive infinity, respectively.
Infinity is generated by overflow or by the operation of dividing by zero. The NaN stands for the not-a-number and
is obtained as a result of the mathematically undefined operations such as 0.0/0.0 or ∞ - ∞

1.1.3 Workspace in MATLAB

All variables used in the current MATLAB session are saved in the Workspace. You can view the content of the
Workspace by typing whos in the Command Window. For instance,
whos
Name Size Bytes Class Attributes

ans 1x1 16 double complex

fun 1x1 8 double
s 1x1 8 double
x_int 1x1 8 double
x_real 1x1 8 double

shows all variables used in current session.

1.1.4 MATLAB HELP

One of the nice features of MATLAB is its help system. To learn more about a function, you are to use, say abs,
type in the Command Window

help abs

ABS Absolute value.

ABS(X) is the absolute value of the elements of X. When
X is complex, ABS(X) is the complex modulus (magnitude) of the elements of X.
See also sign, angle, unwrap, hypot.

Overloaded methods:
frd/abs
distributed/abs
iddata/abs
sym/abs

Reference page in Help browser

doc abs

If you do not remember the exact name of a function you want to learn more about use command lookfor followed
by the incomplete name of a function in the Command Window. Now in the command window type help colon

Make sure you understand how the colon operator works.

To enter a statement that is too long to be typed in one line, use three periods, followed by
Enter or Return. For instance,
x = sin(1) - sin(2) + sin(3) - sin(4) + sin(5) -...

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sin(6) + sin(7) - sin(8) + sin(9) - sin(10)

x= 0.7744

You can suppress output to the screen by adding a semicolon after the statement

u = 2 + 3;

1.1.5 MATLAB as a calculator

List of basic arithmetic operations in MATLAB include
Operation Symbol
addition +
subtraction -
multiplication *
division /
exponentiation ^

Observe the output of the following expressions

pi*pi – 10
sin(pi/4)
ans ˆ 2 %<--- "ans" holds the last result

x = sin( pi/5 );
cos( pi/5 ) %<--- assigned to what?
y = sqrt( 1 - x*x )
ans

On complex number, the basic operations are supported. Try the following:

z = 3 + 4i, w = -3 + 4j
real(z), imag(z)
abs([z,w]) %<-- Vector constructor
conj(z+w)
angle(z)
exp( j*pi )
exp(j*[ pi/4, 0, -pi/4 ])

Matrices and Arrays in MATLAB

MATLAB is an abbreviation for "matrix laboratory." While other programming languages mostly work with numbers
one at a time, MATLAB is designed to operate primarily on whole matrices and arrays. All MATLAB variables are
multidimensional arrays, no matter what type of data. A matrix is a two-dimensional array often used for linear
algebra.

Array Creation

To create an array with four elements in a single row, separate the elements with either a comma (,) or a space.

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a=[1 2 3 4]
returns
a=1 2 3 4 This type of array is a row vector.
To create a matrix that has multiple rows, separate the rows with semicolons.
a=[1 2 3; 4 5 6; 7 8 10]
returns
a= 1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 10
Another way to create a matrix is to use a function, such as ones, zeros, or rand. For example, create a 5-by-1
column vector of zeros.
z = zeros(5,1)
returns
z=0
0
0
0
0

Colon Operator:
The colon alone, without start or end values, specifies all of the elements in that dimension. For example, select all
the columns in the third row of a:
a(3,:)

ans = 7 8 10

The colon operator also allows you to create an equally spaced vector of values using the more general form
start:step:end.

A = 0:10:100

A= 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

If you omit the middle step,as in start:end, MATLAB uses the default step value of 1.

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1.2 Lab Tasks
1.2.1 Lab Task 1:

(a) Make sure that you understand the colon notation. In particular, explain in words what the following
MATLAB code will produce

a=0:6
b = 2 : 4 : 17
c = 99 : -1 : 88
d = 2 : (1/9) : 4
e = pi * [ 0:0.1:2 ];

 It will create 6 variables named a, b, c, d, and e. The variable a is a row vector with starting
value of 0 and ends at 6 with a default step size of 1 as there is no step size specified. It
contains 7 elements.
 The variable b is also a row vector of four elements with starting value of 2 and ending
value 14 with a step size of 4. When it reaches 14 the next value is 18 which is greater than
the ending value specified so the array will be ended at 14.
 The variable c is also a row vector. It starts from 99 and go in a descending manner to 88
due to step size of -1. If the ending value specified is greater than starting value with
negative step size, matlab will return empty array.
 The variable d is a row vector of real numbers with starting value as 2.0000 and ending
value as 4.0000 with step size of 1/9. By default Matlab generate real numbers with 4 digits
after the decimal point however, it can be changed.
 The variable e is also a row vector with starting value as 0 and ending value as 2*pi with
step size of 0.1*p. However, Matlab will not show the output because the output is
suppressed by the semicolon at the end.

(b) Extracting and/or inserting numbers into a vector is very easy to do. Consider the following definition
of f:

f = [ zeros(1,3), linspace(0,1,5), ones(1,4) ]

f(4:6)
size(f)
length(f)
f(2:2:length(f))
Explain the results echoed from the last four lines of the above code.

 First let me explain this f. It generates a row vector of 12 elements where first three
elements are zeros defined by zeros function. Next 5 elements are equally spaced entries
between 0 and 1 generated by linspace function and last 4 elements are ones generated
by ones function.
 f(4:6) uses the colon operator to extract the 4th , 5th and 6th element of array f. The colon
operator fetches data from first index all the way upto last index specified by the user.

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  size() function returns the dimension of an array i.e. no of rows and no of columns.
Here, it will return 1 x 12 as our array is a row vector with 12 columns.
 The length function returns the total number of elements in an array. As our array has
12 elements so length(f) will return 12.
 The last expression used the colon operator where first term is the starting index,
midterm is the step size and last term is the ending index. So this expression will return
an array of 6 elements whose starting value is 0 (2 nd element of our array) and ends at 1
(12th elements of our array) with a step size of 2.

(c) Observe the result of the following assignments:

g = f; g(4:6) = pi*(1:3)

In this expression first we have copied our f array in a new array and named it g so that our data in
f keep safe. In our g array which is exact copy of f, we have changed the 4 th, 5th and 6th elements with
the help of colon operator. We have replaced the 4 th, 5th and 6th elements of g array with pi, 2*pi,
and 3*pi respectively. Note that our f array will not be altered and now we have 2 different arrays.

1.2.2 Lab Task 2:

Now write a statement that will take the vector f defined in part (b) and replace the even indexed elements
(i.e., f(2), f(4), etc) with the constant ‘π π ‘ (pi raised to the power pi) (Try: finding help on ‘^’ operator or
the function ‘power’). Use a vector replacement, not a loop. Experiment with vectors in MATLAB.
Think of the vector as a set of numbers.

To replace the even indexed elements of vector f, we will use following command:
f(2:2:length(f)) = pi^pi;
It will start from index 2 and ends at the total elements which is 12 in this case with step size of 2
and replace all even indexed elements with pi ^ pi. Note that this is similar to how we have created
g vector but this time we are making direct alterations in f vector.

Try the following:

h = cos( pi*(0:11)/4 ) %<---comment: compute cosines
Explain how the different values of cosine are stored in the vector h. What is h(1)? Is h(0) defined?

cos is the built-in function in Matlab used to calculate cosines. This expression will create an array
of cosines of numbers ranging from 0 to 11*pi /4. It has created array due to the colon operator
used here. Colon operator will range numbers from 0 to 11*pi/4 and then cos function will take
cosine of each number and store it in h. h(1) is the first elements in h array and it is 1 because cos(0)
is 1. h(0) is not defined in Matlab. Opposed to other programming languages e.g. C++ where an
array starts with index 0, in Matlab all arrays starts with index 1. So asking for 0 index gives an
error in Matlab.

1.2.3 Lab task 3:

Loops can be written in MATLAB, but they are NOT the most efficient way to get things done. It’s better
to always avoid loops and use the colon notation instead. The following code has a loop that computes
values of the cosine function. (The index of yy() must start at 1.) Rewrite this computation without using
the loop (follow the style in the previous part).

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g = [ ]; %<--- initialize the yy vector to be empty
for k=-5:5
g(k+6) = cos( k*pi/3 )
end
g

This 4 lines for loop can be easily implemented in a single line using colon operator. The alternative
and efficient way to create array using colon operator can accomplished using the following code:
g = cos((-5:5)*pi/3);
It will generate an array of 11 elements ranging from cos (-5*pi/3) to cos(-5*pi/3).

Explain why it is necessary to write g(k+6). What happens if you use g(k) instead?

It is necessary to write g(k+6) to start the indexing of array from 1. If we use g(k) instead then our
for loop starts from k=-5 and negative indexes are not allowed in Matlab. In Matlab indexes can
only start from 1 or any integer number except zero. So to make it 1 we have to use k+6 in the index
of g.

Plotting in MATLAB
Plotting is easy in MATLAB for both real and complex numbers. The basic plot command will plot a
vector y versus a vector x connecting successive points by straight lines. Try the following:

x = [-3 -1 0 1 3 ];
y = x.*x - 3*x;
plot( x, y )
z = x + y*sqrt(-1)
plot( z ) %<---- complex values: plot imag vs. real.

plot(x,y) will generate following plot:

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While plot(z) will generate following plot:

Note that both plots are similar. This is because the second plot is the plot of complex values
between their real and imaginary values. While the first plot is between two real values. But y has
the same values as the imaginary values in z. Therefore, both plots are similar.

Use help arith to learn how the operation xx.*xx works when xx is a vector; compare to matrix multiply.

In Matlab, there are two types of multiplication operators for vectors or arrays. One is simple * and
second one is .*. The * operator perform the vectors multiplication for which there is a condition
that the number of columns in first array should be equal to number of rows in second array (a
linear algebra multiplication). While .* operator multiples both arrays or vectors elements. Here we

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should have equal number of elements in both array i.e. equal no of rows and columns otherwise it
will throw an error.
Note: stem() command is used to plot discrete set of data.

1.2.4 Lab task 4:

Go to File > New > M –file. MATLAB editor will open up. Enter the following code in the editor and
then save the file as mylab1.m
clear all;
clc;
t = -1 : 0.01 : 1;
x = cos( 5*pi*t );
y = 1.4*exp(j*pi/2)*exp(j*5*pi*t);
plot( t, x, ’b-’, t, real(y), ’r--’ ), grid on
%<--- plot a sinusoid
title(’TEST PLOT of a SINUSOID’)
xlabel(’TIME (sec)’)

Now go to Command Window and type

mylab1 %<---will run the commands in the file
type mylab1 %<---will type out the contents of
% mylab1.m to the screen

Explain why the plot of real(y) is a sinusoid. What is its phase and amplitude?

This code will yield the following output:

The red line is the plot between real(y) and t. It is a sinusoidal function due to Euler’s formula
which is:
e ix =cosx +isinx

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In our y, there are exponential terms whose subscripts can be added and then convert into this
form using Euler’s formula.
( π2 +5 πt )i
y=1.4 e

y=1.4 (cos ( π2 +5 πt )+ isin( π2 +5 πt ))

π
real ( y ) =1.4 cos ( + 5 πt )
2

So, with different values of t, real(y) will plot a sinusoidal function.

The amplitude and phase can easily be calculated by just looking at the equation. The amplitude is
the constant multiple of cos or sin function which is 1.4 is this case. And as we can see in the plot,
indeed the amplitude is 1.4.
The phase is the angle inside the cos without t which is pi/2 in this case and from plot it is verified
that the phase is pi/2 because the red wave is starting from 0 and blue one is starting from -1.

Functions in MATLAB

User-defined functions (i.e., those no pre-programmed in Matlab) can be defined by using an m file.
These files are simply text files whose name ends with the suffix .m. Those m files that a user may create
are typically stored in the work directory. This directory is the default working directory of a MATLAB
installation.

Functions defined by m files start with the line

function [assignment_variable(s)] = function_name(arguments)

Here, function is a required MATLAB particle to identify the file as a function, assignment_variable(s) is
an optional dummy variable, function_name is the name given to the function, and arguments are optional
values passed on to the function from the main MATLAB interface or from within another function.

1.2.5 Lab task 5:

Create a function “sigadd” to add two sequences ‘x1’ and ‘x2’.

Function [y,n]=sigadd(x1,n1,x2,n2)
Where ‘x1’ and ‘x2’ are two sequences and ‘n1’ and ‘n2’ are their respective indices vectors. Add values
of ‘x1’ and ‘x2’ at corresponding indices, pad zeros if length of two sequences are not same.

Suppose x1= [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9] with index n1= 3:11 and x2= [2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24] with
index n2=1:12. Here you can observe that the length of both the signals is not same and the indexes of
both the signals are not starting from the same point. So you have to pad zeros before adding both the
sequences so that the output y will have the index values starting from 1 up to 12.

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Hint: You may need the loops and if else checks. Loops syntax is already discussed above and syntax of
if else is given below.

CODE:

%Ch M Shaheer Yasir 286021 B

% This function will add two sequences x1 and x2 with their indices n1 and n2
% respectively. n1 and n2 can be different and x1 and x2 can also be of different
% sizes. In that case we have to pad zeros before adding them.
function [y,n] = sigadd(x1,n1,x2,n2)
% First we will calculate the minimum and maximum indices of both sequences
minx1 = min(n1);
minx2 = min(n2);
maxx1 = max(n1);
maxx2 = max(n2);
% Here we will assign minimum index of our output sequence to be the minimum of
% both indices.
if minx1 <= minx2
minx = minx1;
else
minx = minx2;
endif
% Here we have assigned maximum index of our output index to be the maximum of
% both indices.
if maxx1 >= maxx2
maxx = maxx1;
else
maxx = maxx2;
endif
% so we will define our output range from minimum of both indices to maximum
% of both indices
n = minx:maxx;
% here we have calculated lengths of both sequences and our output sequence.
% we will use them in incoming for loops
L1 = length(x1);
L2 = length(x2);
L = length(n);
% here we have pad our output sequence with zeros and then we will replace them
% accordingly
y = zeros(1,L);
% this for loop will replace the zeros in output sequence with values in x1.
% if there is no value in x1 then, zero will not be replaced.
for i=1:L
for a = 1:L1
if n(i) == n1(a)
y(i) = x1(a);
endif
endfor
endfor

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 % this for loop is adding the values in x2 with the values already present in
% output sequence. Note that the values already present in output sequence are
% the values of x1 and padded zeros.
% this will generate our output sequence which is the sum of x1 and x2
for i=1:L
for a =1:L2
if n(i)== n2(a)
y(i) = y(i) + x2(a);
endif
endfor
endfor

CODE IN MATLAB IDE:

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OUTPUT:

Syntax of if/elseif/else

Execute statements if condition is true

if expression
statements
elseif expression
statements
else
statements

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 end

if expression, statements, end evaluates an expression, and executes a group of statements when the

expression is true.
elseif and else are optional, and execute statements only when previous expressions in the if block are
false. An if block can include multiple elseif statements.
An evaluated expression is true when the result is nonempty and contains all nonzero elements (logical or
real numeric). Otherwise, the expression is false.

Best Resource or learning MATLAB: For getting familiar with MATLAB operations, matrices,
arrays, loops and plots etc., go to the link given below which contain official documentation on
mathworks with name “Getting Started with MATLAB”

www.mathworks.com/help/pdf_doc/matlab/getstart.pdf

https://www.tutorialspoint.com/matlab/

CONCLUSION:
In this lab, we have learned the introduction of one of the most popular programming languages for
linear algebra MATLAB. We have started with very basic introduction of variables, arrays, how to
create plots and then ended with making functions and scripts as .m files. We have created a
function which added two sequences even if their sizes and indices are different. After this lab, we
are able to code any basic program in MATLAB and are ready to take our learning to next level in
incoming labs.

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