ALIASING IN SIGNALS

Laboratory experiment
1. PROBLEM STATEMENT
In this laboratory the aliasing phenomena in oscillatory signals is studied having two
continuous signals at disposal. They are converted into digital signals by sampling, and
analyzed using Matlab program. It is showed how the aliasing affects an oscillatory
signal by comparing the graphs. A lower sample rate leads to losing information. Adding
a filter will remove the frequencies above the cut-off frequency, therefore removing the
aliasing.
2. FUNDAMENTALS
Aliasing arises when a signal is discretely sampled at rate that is insufficient to capture
the changes in signal.
The Nyquist sampling theorem provides a prescription for the nominal sampling interval
required to avoid aliasing. It may be stated simply as follow:
The sampling frequency should be at least twice the highest frequency contained in the
signal
Or in mathematical terms:

fs 2 fc

(1)

where fs is the sampling frequency (how often samples are taken per unit of time or
space), and fe is the highest frequency contained in the signal..
Having a lower rate of sampling we are not only losing information, but we are getting
the wrong information about the signal. The person receiving these samples, without any
previous knowledge of the original signal, may well be mislead into thinking that the
signal has quite a different form.
The simply way to avoid the aliasing of course is to always to have enough samples to
capture the spatial or temporal variations in a signal. But there are many situations in
which the sample rate may be limited, for example, film is limited at 24 frames/sec, or
you may designing a web page where the images need to be a minimum number of pixels
so they download quickly.. So, if the sampling rate fs is fixed, then there is only on other

parameter we can pay with, and that is the highest frequency contained in the signal, fc.
This can be done by lowpass filtering, or in the laymans terms, smoothing.
Low-pass filter
An ideal low-pass filter completely eliminates all frequencies above the cutoff frequency
while passing those below unchanged; its frequency response is a rectangular function
and is a brick-wall filter. The transition region present in practical filters does not exist in
an ideal filter. An ideal low-pass filter can be realized mathematically (theoretically) by
multiplying a signal by the rectangular function in the frequency domain or, equivalently,
convolution with its impulse response, a sinc function, in the time domain.

Figure 1. Low-pass filter in time domain

3. PROCEDURE
Two signals were recorded using a Matlab program and saved at a sample rate
f s 1000 Hz . A graph with Amplitude vs Time were plotted for each signal.

Figure 1. Signal 1: Sample Rate=1000Hz; No Filter

Figure 2. Signal 2: Sample Rate=1000Hz; No Filter

In order to see if the aliasing effect is present, the same signals are recorded at the lower
sample rate, 900Hz.

Figure 3. Signal 1: Sample Rate=900Hz; No Filter

Figure 4. Signal 2: Sample Rate=900Hz; No Filter

After decreasing the sample rate we observe that the shape of first signal remained the
same, but the signal 2 changed dramatically.
In the next step if we look what happens if we add a low pass filter for both sample rate,
900 Hz, and 1000 Hz.

Figure 5. Signal 1: Sample Rate=1000Hz; Low Pass Filter

Figure 6. Signal 2: Sample Rate=1000Hz; Low Pass Filter

Figure 7. Signal 1: Sample Rate=900Hz; Low Pass Filter

Figure 8. Signal 8: Sample Rate=900Hz; Low Pass Filter

We observe in last four graphs that having a low pass filter before decreasing the sample
rate does not modify the information from signals.

4. CONCLUSION
From the analysis of two signals we can conclude that a lower sample rate leads to
aliasing phenomena and losing information (see Fig. 1 and 3). Then we observe that a
lower pass filter helps to keep the information when a lower sample rate is imposed.

REFERENCES
1. Beckwith, T. G., Mechanical measurements. Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007. 128.
print.
2. Prandoni P., Vetterli M, Signal Processing for communications. EPFL Press, 2008.