Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Faculty of Engineering
Beirut Arab University

COMP 453 – Lab Experiment

Experiment 6

Analog to Digital Conversion – 1:

Sampling

Fall 2018 - 2019

 EXPERIMENT DESCRIPTION

GENERAL RULES

 If you open a VI and you are not asked to do any changes to it, then close it without saving
changes by clicking on “Defer decision”.

 Save plots as [Student family name]_Question number.jpg. For questions with more than
one plot, append extra info to the name to differentiate between the plots.

PART I: SAMPLING

In this part, you will investigate the sampling procedure on various simple input signals. You
will consider the effect of aliasing and attempt to correct it by two approaches:
(1) increasing the sampling frequency and (2) band-limiting the input signal.

A. THE SAMPLING VI

Open the Block Diagram of “SamplingExample.VI”.

The two block subVIs are the following:

Sampling.VI
Samples a signal according to the specified sampling frequency.
SignalReconstruction.VI
Reconstructs a sampled signal to its initial state.

Q.1 Explain how the case structure between the signal generator and the
sampler works. What is its function?

Double-click on “Sampling.VI”.

Q.2 Explain how sampling is implemented.

Double-click on “SignalReconstruction.VI”.

Q.3 Explain how reconstruction is performed.

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B. SAMPLING A SINE WAVEFORM

On the Front Panel of the “SamplingExample.VI”, set the following parameters:

Signal Type Sine Wave

Signal Frequency 5 kHz
PreSampling LPF ON? OFF

Q.4 For the given sine wave, what is the theoretical minimum sampling
frequency to allow perfect reconstruction? Justify your answer.

Q.5 What value would you choose for the Reconstruction LPF Cut-off
Frequency? Justify your answer.

Set the Sampling Frequency to the value in Q.4, and the Reconstruction LPF Cut-off Frequency
to the value in Q.5 and run the VI.

Q.6 Do you observe a perfect reconstructed signal? Comment.

Run the VI for Sampling Frequencies of 20 kHz, 30 kHz, and 40 kHz. Save the figure of the
filtered signal for every sampling frequency (four cases)

Q.7 Explain the effect of increasing the sampling frequency, and indicate which
value would you choose for perfect reconstruction?

Q.8 What are the periodic pulses that appear in the spectrum of the sampled
signal?
Hint: Look at the distance between two consecutive pairs.

Set the Sampling Frequency to 7.5 kHz and run the VI.

Q.9 What are the extra frequency components that appear in the spectrum of
the reconstructed signal? What is this effect called?
Save the figure of the filtered signal and the spectrum of the reconstructed signal.

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C. SAMPLING A SAW-TOOTH WAVEFORM

On the Front Panel of the “SamplingExample.VI”, set the following parameters:

Signal Type Sawtooth Wave

Signal Frequency 5 kHz
PreSampling LPF ON? OFF
Sampling Frequency 40 kHz
Reconstruction Cut-off Frequency 5 kHz

Run the VI.

Q.10 What do you observe on the spectrum graph of the original signal? Save a
figure of the filtered spectrum.

Inspect the graph of the filtered signal.

Q.11 Why is the filtered signal different from the original signal?
Hint: Try to vary the value of the Reconstruction Cut-off Frequency.

Q.12 How can a pre-sampling filter be used to remove aliasing?

Q.13 What is the best value of the Cut-off frequency of the PreSampling LPF
when the sampling frequency is 40 kHz? Explain.

Set the PreSampling LPF ON and set its Cut-off Frequency to 20 kHz, similarly set the
Reconstruction Cut-off Frequency to 20 KHz and run the VI.

Q.14 Inspecting the original signal, what is the disadvantage of using a LPF
before sampling? Save a figure of the Original signal, original spectrum
and filtered spectrum