The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering

ELEC001 – Electronic and Information Technology

Homework 1
Issue Date: 15-09-2009
Due Date: 25-09-2009 5:00pm No late submission is accepted

1. Suppose you are playing the piano and generate the time domain representation of part of
the audio signal shown below (Figure 1):

0.0229

Figure 1

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 Frequencies for notes on the piano keyboard are shown below (Figure 2):

Figure 2

i. What is the period of the signal shown in Figure 1?

ii. Determine which note is played when the signal in Figure 1 is recorded. (Note: Choose
the piano key that has a frequency closest to what is shown in Figure 1)
iii. The signal shown in Figure 1 is composed of a fundamental frequency and its 2nd and 4th
harmonics. The 1st harmonic, 2nd harmonic and 4th harmonic have amplitude of 2, 3, and
4 respectively. Express the signal in the time domain as a sum of sine functions.
iv. Draw the frequency domain representation of the signal in iii.
v. Assume we have a band-pass filter that has a frequency response as shown below
(Figure 3). Draw the frequency domain representation of the filtered output signal when
the input signal is the signal in iv.

262 393 524 f/Hz

Figure 3

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2. Excel Exercise [You should answer this problem using Microsoft Excel.]

The frequency domain representation of a signal is shown below:

Amplitude

3 5 7 f/Hz
Figure 4

i. What are the fundamental frequency and the corresponding period of this signal (shown
in Figure 4)?
ii. Plot the signal (shown in Figure 4) in the time domain from t = 0 to 2 second using
Microsoft Excel. [*Note: guidelines on using EXCEL for plotting sine function are
provided on our course website: http://course.ee.ust.hk/elec001]

3. Matlab Exercise [You should answer this problem using Matlab]

i. For the signal with 4 harmonics (first to fourth) that can be generated from the script, do
the following:
a) Plot the time domain signal for the case in which all the harmonics have amplitude
of 1.
b) Plot the time domain signal for the case in which the first and third harmonics have
amplitude of 3 while the others have amplitude of 2.
c) What is the fundamental frequency? Plot the frequency domain signal in b).
d) Suggest a method to triple the fundamental frequency.

ii. For the piece of music given

a) Plot the music in the time domain, the frequency domain and its spectrum.
b) Apply a low-pass filter with cut-off frequency at 2 kHz and plot the filtered signal
and the corresponding spectrum.
c) Now apply the band-pass filter with unlabeled cut-off frequencies at X kHz and Y
kHz, where Y > X. Plot the spectrogram of the filtered signal. What are the values
of X and Y?
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d) From the spectrogram in c), which area contains more energy – the low- frequency
region, or the high-frequency region? Justify your answer.

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