9/3/2017 How to plot FFT using Matlab FFT of basic signals : Sine and Cosine waves GaussianWaves

Published July 16, 2014 by Mathuranathan

How to plot FFT using Matlab FFT of

basic signals : Sine and Cosine waves
(73 votes, average: 4.60 out of 5)

Articles in this series:

How to Interpret FFT results complex DFT, frequency bins and FFTShift
How to Interpret FFT results obtaining Magnitude and Phase
information
FFT and Spectral Leakage
How to plot FFT using Matlab FFT of basic signals : Sine and Cosine
waves (this article)
Generating Basic signals Square Wave and Power Spectral Density
using FFT
Generating Basic signals Rectangular Pulse and Power Spectral Density
using FFT
Generating Basic Signals Gaussian Pulse and Power Spectral Density
using FFT
Chirp Signal Frequency Sweeping FFT and power spectral density
Constructing the Auto Correlation Matrix using FFT

Introduction
Numerous texts are available to explain the basics of Discrete Fourier
Transform and its very efficient implementation Fast Fourier
Transform (FFT). Often we are confronted with the need to generate
simple, standard signals (sine, cosine, Gaussian pulse, squarewave,
isolated rectangular pulse, exponential decay, chirp signal) for
simulation purpose. I intend to show (in a series of articles) how these
basic signals can be generated in Matlab and how torepresent them in
frequency domain using FFT.

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9/3/2017 How to plot FFT using Matlab FFT of basic signals : Sine and Cosine waves GaussianWaves

For more such examples check this ebook : Simulation of Digital

Communications using Matlab by Mathuranathan Viswanathan

Sine Wave
In order to generate a sine wave in Matlab, the first step is to fix the
frequency f of the sine wave. For example, I intend to generate a
f = 10H z sine wave whose minimum and maximum amplitudes are

1V and +1V respectively. Now that you have determined the

frequency of the sinewave, the next step is to determine the sampling

rate. Matlab is a software that processes everything in digital. In order to
generate/plot a smooth sine wave, the sampling rate must be far higher
than the prescribed minimum required sampling rate which is at least
twice the frequency f as per Nyquist Shannon Theorem. A
oversampling factorof 30 is chosen here this is to plot a smooth
continuous-like sine wave (If this is not the requirement, reduce the
oversampling factor to desired level). Thus the sampling rate becomes
f s = 30f = 300H z . If a phase shift is desired for the sine wave, specify

it too.

f=10; %frequency of sine wave

overSampRate=30; %oversampling rate
fs=overSampRate*f; %sampling frequency
phase = 1/3*pi; %desired phase shift in radians
nCyl = 5; %to generate five cycles of sine wave

t=0:1/fs:nCyl*1/f; %time base

x=sin(2*pi*f*t+phase); %replace with cos if a cosine wave is desired

plot(t,x);
title(['Sine Wave f=', num2str(f), 'Hz']);
xlabel('Time(s)');
ylabel('Amplitude');

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9/3/2017 How to plot FFT using Matlab FFT of basic signals : Sine and Cosine waves GaussianWaves

Representing in Frequency
Domain
Representing the given signal in frequency domain is done via Fast
Fourier Transform (FFT) which implements Discrete Fourier Transform
(DFT) in an efficient manner. Usually, power spectrum is desired for
analysis in frequency domain. In a power spectrum, power of each
frequency component of the given signal is plotted against their
respective frequency. The command FFT(x,N) computes the N -point
DFT. The number of points N in the DFT computation is taken as
power of 2 for facilitating efficient computation with FFT.A value of
N = 1024 is chosen here. It can also be chosen as next power of 2 of the
length of the signal.

Different representations of
FFT:
Since FFT is just a numeric computation of N -point DFT, there are many
ways to plot the result.

1. Plotting raw values of DFT:

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The x-axis runs from 0 to N 1 representing N sample values. Since

the DFT values are complex, the magnitude of the DFT (abs(X)) is
plotted on the y-axis. From this plot we cannot identify the frequency of
the sinusoid that was generated.

1 NFFT=1024; %NFFT-point DFT

2 X=fft(x,NFFT); %compute DFT using FFT
3 nVals=0:NFFT-1; %DFT Sample points
4 plot(nVals,abs(X));
5 title('Double Sided FFT - without FFTShift');
6 xlabel('Sample points (N-point DFT)')
7 ylabel('DFT Values');

2. FFT plot plotting raw values against

Normalized Frequency axis:

In the next version of plot, the frequency axis (x-axis) is normalized to

unity. Just divide the sample index on the x-axis by the length N of the
FFT. This normalizes the x-axis with respect to the sampling rate fs . Still,
we cannot figure out the frequency of the sinusoid from the plot.

1 NFFT=1024; %NFFT-point DFT

2 X=fft(x,NFFT); %compute DFT using FFT
3 nVals=(0:NFFT-1)/NFFT; %Normalized DFT Sample points
4 plot(nVals,abs(X));
5 title('Double Sided FFT - without FFTShift');
6 xlabel('Normalized Frequency')
7 ylabel('DFT Values');

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9/3/2017 How to plot FFT using Matlab FFT of basic signals : Sine and Cosine waves GaussianWaves

3. FFT plot plotting raw values against

normalized frequency (positive & negative
frequencies):

As you know, in the frequency domain, the values take up both positive
and negative frequency axis. In order to plot the DFT values on a
frequency axis with both positive and negative values, the DFT value at
sample index 0 has to be centered at the middle of the array. This is done
by using F F T shif t function in Matlab. The x-axis runs from 0.5 to
0.5 where the end points are the normalized folding frequencies with
respect to the sampling rate fs .

1 NFFT=1024; %NFFT-point DFT

2 X=fftshift(fft(x,NFFT)); %compute DFT using FFT
3 fVals=(-NFFT/2:NFFT/2-1)/NFFT; %DFT Sample points
4 plot(fVals,abs(X));
5 title('Double Sided FFT - with FFTShift');
6 xlabel('Normalized Frequency')
7 ylabel('DFT Values');

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9/3/2017 How to plot FFT using Matlab FFT of basic signals : Sine and Cosine waves GaussianWaves

4. FFT plot Absolute frequency on the x-

axis Vs Magnitude on Y-axis:

Here, the normalized frequency axis is just multiplied by the sampling

rate. From the plot below we can ascertain that the absolute value of FFT
peaks at 10H z and 10H z . Thus the frequency of the generated
sinusoid is 10H z . The small side-lobes next to the peak values at 10H z
and 10H z are due to spectral leakage.

1 NFFT=1024;
2 X=fftshift(fft(x,NFFT));
3 fVals=fs*(-NFFT/2:NFFT/2-1)/NFFT;
4 plot(fVals,abs(X),'b');
5 title('Double Sided FFT - with FFTShift');
6 xlabel('Frequency (Hz)')
7 ylabel('|DFT Values|');

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9/3/2017 How to plot FFT using Matlab FFT of basic signals : Sine and Cosine waves GaussianWaves

5. Power Spectrum Absolute frequency on

the x-axis Vs Power on Y-axis:

The following is the most important representation of FFT. It plots the

power of each frequency component on the y-axis and the frequency on
the x-axis. The power can be plotted in linear scale or in log scale. The
power of each frequency component is calculated as

P x (f ) = X(f )X (f )

Where X(f ) is the frequency domain representation of the signal x(t).

In Matlab, the power has to be calculated with proper scaling terms
(since the length of the signal and transform length of FFT may differ
from case to case).

1 NFFT=1024;
2 L=length(x);
3 X=fftshift(fft(x,NFFT));
4 Px=X.*conj(X)/(NFFT*L); %Power of each freq components
5 fVals=fs*(-NFFT/2:NFFT/2-1)/NFFT;
6 plot(fVals,Px,'b');
7 title('Power Spectral Density');
8 xlabel('Frequency (Hz)')
9 ylabel('Power');

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If you wish to verify the total power of the signal from time domain and
frequency domain plots, follow this link.
Plotting the PSD plot with y-axis on log scale produces the most
encountered type of PSD plot in signal processing.

1 NFFT=1024;
2 L=length(x);
3 X=fftshift(fft(x,NFFT));
4 Px=X.*conj(X)/(NFFT*L); %Power of each freq components
5 fVals=fs*(-NFFT/2:NFFT/2-1)/NFFT;
6 plot(fVals,10*log10(Px),'b');
7 title('Power Spectral Density');
8 xlabel('Frequency (Hz)')
9 ylabel('Power');

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9/3/2017 How to plot FFT using Matlab FFT of basic signals : Sine and Cosine waves GaussianWaves

6. Power Spectrum One-Sided frequencies

In this type of plot, the negative frequency part of x-axis is omitted. Only
the FFT values corresponding to 0 to N /2) sample points of N -point
DFT are plotted. Correspondingly, the normalized frequency axis runs
between 0 to 0.5. The absolute frequency (x-axis) runs from 0 to fs /2.

1 L=length(x);
2 NFFT=1024;
3 X=fft(x,NFFT);
4 Px=X.*conj(X)/(NFFT*L); %Power of each freq components
5 fVals=fs*(0:NFFT/2-1)/NFFT;
6 plot(fVals,Px(1:NFFT/2),'b','LineSmoothing','on','LineWidth',1);
7 title('One Sided Power Spectral Density');
8 xlabel('Frequency (Hz)')
9 ylabel('PSD');

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9/3/2017 How to plot FFT using Matlab FFT of basic signals : Sine and Cosine waves GaussianWaves

Rate this article: (73 votes, average: 4.60 out of 5)

Articles in this series:

How to Interpret FFT results complex DFT, frequency bins and FFTShift
How to Interpret FFT results obtaining Magnitude and Phase
information
FFT and Spectral Leakage
How to plot FFT using Matlab FFT of basic signals : Sine and Cosine
waves (this article)
Generating Basic signals Square Wave and Power Spectral Density
using FFT
Generating Basic signals Rectangular Pulse and Power Spectral Density
using FFT
Generating Basic Signals Gaussian Pulse and Power Spectral Density
using FFT
Chirp Signal Frequency Sweeping FFT and power spectral density
Constructing the Auto Correlation Matrix using FFT

For more such examples check this ebook : Simulation of Digital

Communications using Matlab by Mathuranathan Viswanathan

Recommended Signal
Processing Books

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Generating Basic signals Square Wave and Power Spectral Density

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engineering and has 9 years of technical expertise in
channel modeling and has worked in various
technologies ranging from read channel design for
hard drives, GSM/EDGE/GPRS, OFDM, MIMO, 3GPP
PHY layer and DSL. He also specializes in tutoring on
various subjects like signal processing, random
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Muna Shehan 5 months ago

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9/3/2017 How to plot FFT using Matlab FFT of basic signals : Sine and Cosine waves GaussianWaves

Hi all; this article for a sine wave signal. what can i do if the signal is still sine wave
with five cycles where each cycle amplitude is less than the previous cycle until the
wave is decay at a specific time, and if the x value is represented by a vector which
contain the data ( I mean x is not represented by equation). My question how i can
implemented fft for my signal.
Thanks in advance
Reply Share

Mathuranathan Mod > Muna Shehan 5 months ago

Just assign the signal contents to the variable x and the call the FFT routine
as mentioned in the post
X=fft(x,NFFT); %x is your signal,

you can use any of the different representations to plot the FFT output.
Reply Share

Mohand a year ago

Hi everybody,

I need to do fft to obtain the frequency content of my signal and calculate the
energy to obtain the transmission coefficient, but I have a lot of problems since I
don't know exatly what is the correct way to obtain everything with a correct scale
and units.

I have an output signal (voltage vs time : size(u)=(100000,2)) obtained from

excitation: pulse (pulse width = 100 s); on the oscilloscope : duration is 10 ms and
10 MSa/s of sampling rate.

for the frequencies, I expect to get a fundamental at around 8 KHz and the
harmonics (2nd and third).

this is a very smal part of my signal :

t(s) t(volts)
3.99000000E-02 1.3574E-02
3.99001000E-02 1.4299E-02
3.99002000E-02 1.3969E-02
see more

Reply Share

Yamuna 2 years ago

Hi Sir,

In the above example when I gave the number of cycles as 10, then it is giving a
spectrum which has a higher amplitude. This seems so strange to me because the
http://www.gaussianwaves.com/2014/07/how-to-plot-fft-using-matlab-fft-of-basic-signals-sine-and-cosine-waves/ 13/21
9/3/2017 How to plot FFT using Matlab FFT of basic signals : Sine and Cosine waves GaussianWaves
spectrum which has a higher amplitude. This seems so strange to me because the
number of cycles is just a visualisation parameter and that should not chance the
appearance of the spectrum.

nCyl = 10; %to generate ten cycles of sine wave

Kindly explain why this is happening.

Reply Share

Mathuranathan Mod > Yamuna 2 years ago

I was plotting the NON-normalized magnitude spectrum. The amplitude is

influenced by the number of samples taken to compute DFT. For normalized
magnitude spectrum please check the following post.
http://www.gaussianwaves.co...
Reply Share

ArrozConCostra 2 years ago

Thanks very much, very explanatory article

There's an error on point 3. It should read

X=fftshift(x,NFFT); %compute DFT using FFT

Rgds
Reply Share

Mathuranathan Mod > ArrozConCostra 2 years ago

Thanks for pointing it out

Reply Share

Antonis Tsiflikiotis 2 years ago

Hi!
Can you plean explain me why in Psd:
Px=X.*conj(X)/(NFFT*L)

you divide by (NFFT*L) and not L^2?

Reply Share

ArrozConCostra > Antonis Tsiflikiotis 2 years ago

I would ask why he does not divide only by L, as this is the usual scaling
factor when calculating FFT
Reply Share

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