ELEMENTARY SIGNALS: UNIT STEP

EXPERIMENT NO. ____

I. OBJECTIVES
To understand and illustrate a signal using unit step.

II. EQUIPMENT AND MATERIALS

(1) PC with MATLAB

III. PROCEDURE
1. Using hand-solution, express the waveform of Figure 1 as a sum of unit step functions.

Figure 1 Waveform 1
2. Solution for Figure 1 is to get first the slope and equation of each segment of the waveform as
shown in the following solutions.
3  1 v (t )  1
L1 : m    2; v(t )  2t  1
1 0 t 0
L2 : v(t )  3
1 0 1 v (t )  0
L3 : m    1  ; v (t )  t  3
23 1 t 3
The equation therefore:
v(t )  ( 2t  1)[u (t )  u (t  1)]  3[u (t  1)  u (t  2)]  ( t  3)[u (t  2)  u (t  3)]
 ( 2t  1)u (t )  ( 2t  1)u (t  1)  3u (t  1)  3u (t  2)  ( t  3)u (t  2)  ( t  3)u (t  3)
combining like terms:
v(t )  (2t  1)u (t )  (2t  2)u (t  1)  (t )u (t  2)  (t  3)u (t  3)

3. Before plotting the final equation for the waveform, we defined first unit step in MATLAB. (Place
this as a function file).
%step function u(t)
%created by gcmallari,pece,ree
function [U] = u(t);

U = 0.*(t < 0) + 1.*(t >= 0);

gcmallari,pece-ree,m.ee 1
 Plotting the waveform we use the MATLAB script (placed this in another program file)
%use the step function to write an expression for the function illustrated
figure('Units', 'normalized',...
'Color', [1 1 1],...
'Position', [0.09 0.0595 0.8 0.8],...
'Name', 'Using Step Function to form Triangular Wave',...
'Numbertitle', 'off')

t = 0:0.0001:3;
f = (2*t+1).*u(t) - (2*t-2).*u(t-1) + (-t).*u(t-2) + (t-3).*u(t-3);
plot(t, f,'linewidth', 3), grid on
xlabel('t(s)'); ylabel('v(t) V')
title('Using Unit Step')

4. Express the voltage waveform v(t) as shown in Figure 2 as a sum of unit step functions for the
time interval -1< t < 7 seconds.

Figure 2. Waveform no 2

gcmallari,pece-ree,m.ee 2
5. Express the voltage waveform v(t) shown in Figure 3 as a sum of unit step functions for the time
interval 0 < t < 7 s.

Figure 3. Waveform no 3

gcmallari,pece-ree,m.ee 3