Lecture 06
ME 370
Engineering Measurements
and Instrumentation
Lecture 06
Fourier Analysis
Sampling
Aliasing/Leakage
Mechanical Engineering
ME 370
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Lecture 06
Summary of Previous Lecture
• Signal characteristics
How to sample?
• Fourier analysis
(a) Digital signal (b) Digital waveform
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Lecture 06
Root-Mean-Square (RMS) Value
RMS current value can also be defined as the value of the DC that dissipates the
same power in a resistor.
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Lecture 06
Fourier Series
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Lecture 06
Fourier Series Properties
• a0 represents the average signal
• an represents the even components
• bn represents the odd components
• Therefore
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Lecture 06
High Frequencies Give Details
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Lecture 06
Frequency Spectrum: Fourier Series
• For each frequency component
– Circular frequency: n= 2n =2fn(rad/sec)
– Regular frequency: fn = n/T (Hz)
• Each coefficient amplitude at frequency fn
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Lecture 06
Frequency Spectrum
• Plot RMS amplitude of Fourier series term
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Lecture 06
Discrete Fourier Series
• Discrete Fourier transform (DFT)
• Fast Fourier transform (FFT)
• Problems
– Aliasing
– Frequency leakage
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Lecture 06
What is happening?
[Link]
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Lecture 06
Sampling: discrete representation of
an analog signal
• The discrete recreation
of the amplitude and
the frequency of an
analog signal depends
on
– Time interval between
each measurement (t)
– Total sample period T =
Nt, N is the number of
measurements
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Lecture 06
Sampling Rate
• Sampling rate: fs = 1/ t
• For a given frequency/ies signal
– How fast should sample?
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Lecture 06
Sampling Theorem (Nyquist)
• To reconstruct a signal, the sampling rate (fs)
must be greater than twice the highest
frequency (fm) component of interest
fs 2 fm
• Nyquist frequency fs 1
f N = fm = =
2 2t
– All frequencies above Nyquist frequency appears
aliasing
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Lecture 06
Aliasing
• Definition: describes an effect that causes
different continuous signals to become
indistinguishable when sampled
• Alias frequencies (m integer)
f alias = f − mf s
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Lecture 06
Example 4
• fs = 1 Hz, signals f = 0.1 Hz and f = 0.9 Hz are
indistinguishable when m = 1.
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Lecture 06
Minimum Aliasing Frequency
• To reconstruct the signal, the lowest
frequency signal is usually more important
– Choose integer m to minimize the value
• Only consider the positive frequencies
– There is no way to distinguish negative and
positive frequency
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Lecture 06
Example 5: Alias Frequencies
• Signals F = 25Hz, 70Hz, 160Hz, 510 Hz, if the sampling
frequency Fs = 100 Hz, compute the minimum alias
frequencies
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Lecture 06
Example 5: Solution
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Lecture 06
Aliasing Minimization
• Set fs to ~5 times fmax
– Require pre-knowledge about the signal
• Filter out signals beyond fN before sampling
– Completely avoid aliasing
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