Introduction to Digital Signal Processing and Filter Design

CHAPTER 9

MATLAB Primer

9.1 INTRODUCTION

MATLAB is a very powerful and well-known software package¹ that is used in science and engineering disciplines, for numerical computation, data analysis, and graphical visualization. It is available in almost all platforms such as personal computers, and workstations running under several operating systems. When you begin a session by typing the command matlab, the first window displayed on the monitor is the command window with the prompt >>, which is waiting for your command.² Use the command exit to end the session.

MATLAB contains a large collection of built-in functions and commands that are used in an interactive mode, when you are in the command window. As soon as the name of a function or a command is typed at the prompt in the command window, with the proper syntax, the answer is displayed immediately. But there are two other windows, the edit window and graphics window, which will be discussed later. The software package is designed to use additional sets of functions that are more applicable in particular disciplines such as control systems, digital signal processing, communications engineering, and image processing. There are more than 20 sets known as “toolboxes” (e.g., control toolbox, digital signal processing toolbox, communication toolbox, image processing toolbox). All of them run under MATLAB and implement the functions on the basis of matrix manipulation of numerical data, and that is why the software is called MATLAB ...