Signal Processing Toolbox

What Is the Signal Processing Toolbox?

The Signal Processing Toolbox is a collection of tools built on the MATLAB numeric computing environment. The toolbox supports a wide range of signal processing operations, from waveform generation to filter design and implementation, parametric modeling, and spectral analysis. The toolbox provides two categories of tools:

Command line functions in the following categories:

• Analog and digital filter analysis
• Digital filter implementation
• FIR and IIR digital filter design
• Analog filter design
• Filter discretization
• Spectral Windows Transforms
• Cepstral analysis
• Statistical signal processing and spectral analysis
• Parametric modeling
• Linear Prediction
• Waveform generation

A suite of interactive graphical user interfaces for

• Filter design and analysis
• Window design and analysis
• Signal plotting and analysis
• Spectral analysis
• Filtering signals

Signal Processing Toolbox Central Features

The Signal Processing Toolbox functions are algorithms, expressed mostly in M-files, that implement a variety of signal processing tasks. These toolbox functions are a specialized extension of the MATLAB computational and graphical environment.

Filtering and FFTs

Two of the most important functions for signal processing are not in the Signal Processing Toolbox at all, but are built-in MATLAB functions:

• filter applies a digital filter to a data sequence.
• fft calculates the discrete Fourier transform of a sequence.

The operations these functions perform are the main computational workhorses of classical signal processing. Both are described in this chapter. The Signal Processing Toolbox uses many other standard MATLAB functions and language features, including polynomial root finding, complex arithmetic, matrix inversion and manipulation, and graphics tools.

Signals and Systems

The basic entities that toolbox functions work with are signals and systems. The functions emphasize digital, or discrete, signals and filters, as opposed to analog, or continuous, signals. The principal filter type the toolbox supports is the linear, time-invariant digital filter with a single input and a single output. You can represent linear time-invariant systems using one of several models (such as transfer function, state-space, zero-pole-gain, and second-order section) and convert between representations.

Signal Processing Basics

Key Areas: Filter Design and Spectral Analysis

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