In this chapter we explored the MATLAB environment. There is much more to find out. We found it easy to launch MATLAB, get to the default desktop, and navigate in the default MATLAB desktop. After you have completed this chapter, you will know how to start MATLAB and bring the MATLAB desktop to its default state, navigate through some of the windows in the MATLAB system, use MATLAB in its immediate mode of computing for some of your work and use the extensive MATLAB help facility.

One of the most important distinguishing features of MATLAB^® is how easy it is to work with the matrix data type. We start this chapter with the definition of a matrix. Then, much of the mechanics of working with matrices in MATLAB will be presented. Given these fundamentals, matrix algebra will be applied to several applications, including circuit analysis. After you have completed this chapter, you will know about the origin of the concept of a matrix, the fundamentals of matrix algebra, how MATLAB is particularly well suited for matrix algebra, about many built-in MATLAB functions to find properties of a matrix, how to use MATLAB for resistive circuit analysis and how to solve systems of linear and nonlinear algebraic equations.

The logical data type was introduced in Chapter 4 for decision making in program flow control. In this chapter, the fundamentals of Boolean algebra, which work with logical variables, were presented. It was shown that a Boolean function corresponding to a truth table can be written by inspection of the table. MATLAB was used to evaluate Boolean functions. Boolean algebra was applied to design a logic circuit for binary addition, and with MATLAB the logic circuit was simulated.

While computing does include the processing of numerical data, more generally, computing is concerned with collecting, processing, and presentation of information. In a digital computer system, information is coded in binary format. The binary codes represent not only numerical and logical data, but also character data, which can have many kinds of meaning. For example, in a program file, all variable names and their values, key and reserved words, operations, data, and more are character strings. In this chapter you will learn how to create character strings, manipulate character strings, search character strings, create and work with structure arrays and create and work with cell arrays.

An outstanding feature of MATLAB® is its facility for visualizing data. The built-in function plot has already been used many times. It automatically scales the axes and locates grid lines, which make it convenient to use the plot function. Labels for the axes and a plot title can be added easily. The functions bar and stem to obtain bar charts and stem plots were also easy to use. The plots obtained with these and other two-dimensional (2-D) plotting functions can be edited extensively to create custom figures. Also, MATLAB has a variety of 3-D plotting functions. In this chapter, you will learn how to use additional 2-D plotting functions, place multiple plots within a figure, display the frequency response of an analog filter, use 3-D plotting functions, do translation and rotation of objects in 3-D space, create animations and customize graphics.

The Symbolic Math Toolbox contains a wide variety of functions that can be applied to problems where we would like to retain parameter symbols to better see their effect in problem solutions. This is especially useful to see how a design procedure can be formulated. Now that you have completed this chapter, you should know how to symbolically declare the class of a scalar or matrix object, create expressions, work with rational arithmetic, use many of the special symbolic functions, for example, simplify, limit, subs, and many more, do variable precision arithmetic, solve systems of algebraic equations, do DC and AC circuit analysis, differentiate, plot a function, integrate, find the Fourier series coefficients of a periodic signal, and know how to work with the unit step and impulse functions. In the next chapter, we will apply some of the material from this and previous chapters to more advanced problem areas, including continuous and discrete time signal analysis and continuous and discrete time system analysis.

Simulink® is a facility for modeling and analyzing dynamic systems. With its graphical user interface (GUI), you can build a block diagram model of a dynamic system and then run the model. Simulink includes many libraries of ready to use blocks that represent both linear and nonlinear continuous and discrete time operations. There are libraries of blocks for synthesizing signals and for observing signals. You can also design your own blocks. A Simulink simulation can access MATLAB data files and functions, and output results to MATLAB for further analysis and visualization. While a simulation executes, you can view any part of model behavior as it changes with time. In this chapter, you will learn how to build a model of a dynamic system using Simulink blocks, design a block, simulate a system and observe its behavior and use MATLAB functions in a Simulink simulation.