Frequency response using FFT in MATLAB

Question

Here is the scenario: using a spectrum analyzer i have the input values and the output values. the number of samples is 32000 and the sampling rate is 2000 samples/sec, and the input is a sine wave of 50 hz, the input is current and the output is pressure in psi.

How do i calculate the frequency response from this data using MATLAB, using the FFT function in MATLAB.

i was able to generate a sine wave, that gives out the the magnitude and phase angles, here is the code that i used:

%FFT Analysis to calculate the frequency response for the raw data
%The FFT allows you to efficiently estimate component frequencies in data from a discrete set of values sampled at a fixed rate

% Sampling frequency(Hz)
Fs = 2000;   

% Time vector of 16 second
t = 0:1/Fs:16-1;   

% Create a sine wave of 50 Hz.
x = sin(2*pi*t*50);                                                       

% Use next highest power of 2 greater than or equal to length(x) to calculate FFT.
nfft = pow2(nextpow2(length(x))) 

% Take fft, padding with zeros so that length(fftx) is equal to nfft 
fftx = fft(x,nfft); 

% Calculate the number of unique points
NumUniquePts = ceil((nfft+1)/2); 

% FFT is symmetric, throw away second half 
fftx = fftx(1:NumUniquePts); 

% Take the magnitude of fft of x and scale the fft so that it is not a function of the length of x
mx = abs(fftx)/length(x); 

% Take the square of the magnitude of fft of x. 
mx = mx.^2; 

% Since we dropped half the FFT, we multiply mx by 2 to keep the same energy.
% The DC component and Nyquist component, if it exists, are unique and should not be multiplied by 2.

if rem(nfft, 2) % odd nfft excludes Nyquist point
  mx(2:end) = mx(2:end)*2;
else
  mx(2:end -1) = mx(2:end -1)*2;
end

% This is an evenly spaced frequency vector with NumUniquePts points. 
f = (0:NumUniquePts-1)*Fs/nfft; 

% Generate the plot, title and labels. 
subplot(211),plot(f,mx); 
title('Power Spectrum of a 50Hz Sine Wave'); 
xlabel('Frequency (Hz)'); 
ylabel('Power'); 

% returns the phase angles, in radians, for each element of complex array fftx
phase = unwrap(angle(fftx));
PHA = phase*180/pi;
subplot(212),plot(f,PHA),title('frequency response');
xlabel('Frequency (Hz)')
ylabel('Phase (Degrees)')
grid on

i took the frequency response from the phase plot at 90 degree phase angle, is this the right way to calculate the frequency response?

how do i compare this response to the values that is obtained from the analyzer? this is a cross check to see if the analyzer logic makes sense or not.

Answer 1

Looks OK at first glance, but a couple of things you're missing:

• you should apply a window function to the time domain data before the FFT, see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_function for windowing in general and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hann_window for the most commonly used window function (Hann aka Hanning).

• you probably want to plot log magnitude in dB rather than just raw magnitude

Answer 2

You should consider looking at the cpsd() function for calculating the Frequency response. The scaling and normalisation for various window functions is handled for you.

the Frequency reponse would then be

G = cpsd (output,input) / cpsd (input,input)

then take the angle() to obtain the phase difference between the input and the output.

Your code snippet does not mention what the input and output data sets are.