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Reading Amplitude and Phase Plots

Explore how to analyze signals by computing their Discrete Fourier Transform and interpreting the resulting amplitude and phase plots. Understand the relationship between signal frequency components, their representation in DFT bins, and how magnitude and phase reflect signal characteristics.

We will now construct a signal, take its DFT, and interpret its results by looking at amplitude and phase plots.

Analog signal

Consider a signal made up of two sinusoids as follows:

x(t)=x1(t)+x2(t)=2cos(2π500t+65)+3sin(2π1000t+15) \begin{align*} x(t) &= x_1(t) + x_2(t) \\ &= 2\cos(2\pi 500 t+65^\circ) + 3\sin(2\pi 1000 t + 15 ^\circ) \end{align*}

This is drawn in the figure below:

A composite signal
A composite signal

This is a real signal with no quadrature component.

Sampled signal

Let’s sample this signal at a rate of fs=1/Ts=10f_s=1/T_s=10 kHz.

x[n]=2cos(2π500nTs+65)+3sin(2π1000nTs+15)=2cos(2π120n+65)+3sin(2π220n+15) \begin{align*} x[n] &= 2\cos(2\pi 500 nT_s+65^\circ) + 3\sin(2\pi 1000 nT_s + 15^\circ) \nonumber \\ &= 2\cos\left(2\pi \frac{1}{20}n+65^\circ\right) + 3\sin\left(2\pi \frac{2}{20}n + 15^\circ \right) \end{align*} ...