GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

SCHOOL of ELECTRICAL and COMPUTER ENGINEERING

ECE 2026 Fall 2015
Lab #0: Introduction to MATLAB
Date: 17 21 August 2015
Important Note: This is the first lab of the semester and is mainly to guide you through the MATLAB tool. This
initial lab is different from the rest of the labs as it does not require you to be present in Klaus 2440, the
ECE2026 Lab. Normally, each lab assignment requires a student to complete three stages: Pre-Lab, Exercise and
Verification, and Lab Questions. The Pre-Lab stage requires you to read the assignment and to familiarize
yourself with what the lab is about and what additional tools or equipment you may need before you come to the
lab session. The Exercise and Verification stage will take place in Klaus 2440. You need to follow the
instructions to complete the exercise, which will enable you to answer questions and to record necessary data on
the Lab sheet (attached to the end of each lab assignment). Lab exercise is a critical component of the course
grade; please see syllabus for details.
For this lab ONLY, students can complete the exercise without going to the assigned lab sessions during the first
week. Starting from Lab 1, the normal procedure has to be strictly followed and all students are required to go
to the assigned lab sessions.
All labs are held in room 2440 of the Klaus building. Your GT login will work, as long as you specify the
Windows domain to be AD. If you have difficulty logging in, send an E-mail to
[email protected],
or visit the web site: www.ece-help.gatech.edu
If you have MATLAB installed on your laptop, you are welcome to use your laptop in lab instead of the lab
desktop computers if you wish.
General Lab Instruction
Pre-Lab: You should read the Pre-Lab section of the lab and do all the steps in the Pre-Lab section before your
assigned lab time.
Exercise and Verification: The Exercise section must be completed during your assigned Lab time and the
steps marked Instructor Verification must also be signed off during the lab time. One of the laboratory
instructors must verify the appropriate steps by signing on the Instructor Verification line. When you have
completed a step that requires verification, raise your hand and demonstrate the step to the TA or instructor.
Lab Questions: Instructor Verification is part of the Lab Sheet which has another component with a few lab
related questions that need to be answered at your own pace. The completed lab sheet is, unless noted otherwise,
due at the beginning of the next lab.
The predecessor to the three-credit-hour class ECE2026, which was a four-credit-hour class called ECE2025,
consisted of labs that require a substantial amount of work to be done outside of lab and an elaborate lab report.
To change the workload commensurate with losing one credit hour, we have reworked the labs such that most of
the lab exercises can be completed in individual lab sessions and no lab report (except one in the semester) is
required. To make this work well, you will need to come into lab prepared.
Forgeries and plagiarism are a violation of the honor code and will be referred to the Dean of Students for
disciplinary action. You are allowed to discuss lab exercises with other students and you are allowed to
consult old lab reports, but you cannot give or receive written material or electronic files. Your submitted
work should be original and it should be your own work.

PRINTING BUDGET: For the printers in the ECE labs, you have a quota. Please limit your printing to
essential items for the labs. If you need to print lecture slides and other large documents, use the central (OIT)
printing facilities.

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1. Introduction
The objective of this lab is to help you regain your familiarity with MATLAB, a programming tool most
suitable for signal processing studies. All labs of ECE2026 will involve use of MATLAB in some form.

2. Pre-Lab
Please read through the information below prior to attending your lab.

2.1 Overview
MATLAB will be used extensively in all the labs. The primary goal of this lab is to familiarize a student with
using MATLAB. Please read Appendix B: Programming in MATLAB for an overview. Here are three specific
goals for this lab:
1. Learn basic MATLAB commands and syntax, including the help system.
2. Write and edit your own script files in MATLAB, and run them as commands.
3. Learn a little about advanced programming techniques for MATLAB, i.e., vectorization.

2.2 Movies: MATLAB Tutorials

On the t-square course page, there are a number of movies on basic topics in MATLAB, e.g., colon operator,
indexing, functions, etc. You will find these movies useful.

2.3 Getting Started

After logging in, you can start MATLAB by double-clicking on a MATLAB icon, typing matlab in a terminal
window, or by selecting MATLAB from a menu such as the START menu under Windows. The following steps
will introduce you to MATLAB.
a. View the MATLAB introduction by typing intro at the MATLAB prompt. This short introduction
will demonstrate some of the basics of using MATLAB.
b. Run the MATLAB help desk by typing helpdesk. The help desk provides a hypertext interface to the
MATLAB documentation. Two links of interest are Getting Help and Getting Started with
MATLAB.
c. Explore the MATLAB help capability available at the command line. Try the following:
help
help edit
help plot
help colon %<--- a VERY IMPORTANT notation
help ops
help zeros
help ones
lookfor filter %<--- keyword search
NOTE: it is possible to force MATLAB to display only one screen-full of information at once by
issuing the command more on).
d. control-C will stop the execution of any MATLAB command. For example, using ctl-C while
lookfor is running will force it to stop and print out all the results it has found so far.
e. Run the MATLAB demos: type demo and explore a variety of basic MATLAB commands and plots.
f. Use MATLAB as a calculator. Try the following:
pi*sqrt(2)
0.5*pi*pi 1.5
sin(2*pi/3+0.1)

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 ans ^ 0.8118 %<--- "ans" holds the last result
g. Do variable name assignment in MATLAB. Try the following:
x = sin( 2*pi/5 );
cos( pi/4 ); %<--- assigned to what?
y = sqrt( 2.2 - x*x )
ans %<--- what value is contained in ans?
h. Complex numbers are natural in MATLAB. The basic operations are supported. Try the following:
z = -4 + 3i, w = 3 - 4j
real(z), imag(z)
abs([z,w]) %<-- Vector (or Matrix) constructor
conj(z+w)
angle(z)
exp( -j*pi )
exp(j*[ pi/2, 0, -pi/2 ])

3. Exercise
3.1 Logging into ITS (Intelligent Tutoring System)
Exercises on ITS will be integrated into homework assignments and grades this semester. The first thing
you need to do in this lab is to try to log into ITS at http://its.vip.gatech.edu . Spend some time
to familiarize yourself with ITS and its capabilities.

Verification Sheet Fill-in (separate page)

3.2 MATLAB Array Indexing

a. Make sure that you understand the colon notation. In particular, explain in words what the following
MATLAB code will produce
jkl = -4 : 1
jkl = -2 : 4 : 31
jkl = 87 : -2 : 63
tt = 2 : (1/80) : 3.1
tpi = pi * [ 0:1/4:2 ]
rr = [-1:(1/3):1].*[1:2:14] %% what is .*?
Use help arith to learn how the operation .* works for vectors; compare array multiplication
(dot-star) to matrix multiplication.

When unsure about a command, use help.

b. Extracting and/or inserting numbers in a vector is very easy to do. Consider the following definition of
xx:
xx = [ zeros(1,5), linspace(0,1,6), ones(1,5) ]
xx(5:8)
size(xx)
length(xx)
xx(3:2:length(xx))
Explain the results echoed from each of the last four lines of the above code.
c. Observe the result of the following two assignments:

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 yy = xx; yy(4:2:8) = exp(0.5)*(1:2:5)
Now write a statement that will take the vector xx defined in part (b) and replace the even indexed
elements (i.e., xx(2), xx(4), etc) with the constant e. Use a vector replacement, not a loop.
Record this statement on the Verification Sheet.

Verification Sheet Fill-in (separate page)

3.3 MATLAB Script Files

a. Experiment with vectors in MATLAB. Think of the vector as a set of numbers. Try the following:
xk = cos( pi*(-1:2:25)/3 + pi); %<---comment: compute cosines
Explain how the different values of cosine are stored in the vector xk. What is xk(1)? Is xk(0)
defined?
NOTES: the semicolon at the end of a statement will suppress the echo to the screen. The text following
the % is a comment; it may be omitted.
b. (A taste of vectorization) Loops can be written in MATLAB, but they are NOT the most efficient way
to get things done. Its better to 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).
yy = [ ]; %<--- initialize the yy vector to be empty
for k=-40:40
yy(k+41) = exp( -(k/10)*(k/20) );
end
plot(-40:40, yy)
Explain why it is necessary to write yy(k+41). What happens if you use yy(k) instead? Also,
explain the labels on the x-axis. This functional form is called a Gaussian form. Record your
explanations on the Verification Sheet.

Verification Sheet Fill-in (separate page)

c. Plotting is easy in MATLAB for both real and complex numbers. (See Appendix A of the textbook).
The basic plot command will plot a vector y versus a vector x. Try the following:
x = [-2.8 -1.2 0 1.2 2.8 ];
y = x.*x - 1.8*x;
plot( x, y )
z = x + y*sqrt(-1); % a complex number consists of two parts
plot( z ) % complex values: plot real vs. imaginary
Use help arith to learn how the operation xx.*xx works when xx is a vector; compare array
multiplication (dot-star) to matrix multiplication.
d. Learn more about arithmetic in vector and matrix forms. Try the following:
x = -3:2:3;
y = x.*x + (x*x)*x;
plot( x, y )
The apostrophe means transpose of a vector, i.e., turning a row vector into a column vector and vice
versa. It of course also works for a matrix. (Note that there are more than one apostrophe-looking
symbol; make sure which one works in MATLAB.)

Verification Sheet Fill-in (separate page)

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e. Use the built-in MATLAB editor to create a script file called mylab0.m containing the following
lines:
tt = -0.3 : 0.004 : 0.8;
xx = 3.* cos( 2*pi*3*tt + 1.);
plot( tt, xx, 'b-', tt, xx, 'r--' ), grid on %<--- plot a
%sinusoid
axis([tt(1) tt(end) -3 3]); %what does this do?
title('TEST PLOT of a SINUSOID')
xlabel('TIME (sec)')
Mark the value of xx on your plot when it intersects with the time axis at 0 sec.
Note: Do not save this file or any of your MATLAB files to the local hard disk. Your computer account
contains a private networked directory where you can store your own files. Use the MATLAB
command addpath() to allow MATLAB to see your personal directory (usually the Z: drive).
From the plot which should look smooth, find the values of tt at which the wave attains a peak value.
Which of these locations (values of tt) is the closest to the origin and what is the peak value? Give
your answers on the Verification Sheet.

Verification Sheet Fill-in (separate page)

f. Run your script from MATLAB. To run the file mylab0 that you created previously, try
Mylab0 %<---will run the commands in the file
type mylab0 %<---will type out the contents of mylab0.m
% to the screen

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 Lab #0
ECE-2026 Fall-2015
LAB SHEET
Turn this page in to your grading TA at the beginning of Lab 1

Name: ________________________________________ Date of Lab:_______________

Part 3.1 Logging into ITS

Yes, I have done so and am now familiar with ITS.

Part 3.2 Vector replacement using the colon operator:

Part 3.3(b) Write your vectorized statement below.

In addition, explain why it is necessary to write yy(k+41) in the loop. What happens if you use yy(k)
instead? How would you change the plot command so that the extent of the x-axis would be from 10 to +30?

Part 3.3(d) Write out the result of y.

y =

Part 3.3(e) Give answers to the following:

Peak value = tt =

Question 1-1:
Find the sum of all even-indexed output values generated by mylab0.m.