Is it possible to obtain the imaginary parts along with real part in the evaluation of fast fourier transform?

I have a program , a part of which is shown below:

X=x(:,1); %assigning X, all the values of x of length n.

Y = fft(X,n); % calculating the fast fourier transform of X.

T=fft(t,n); %calculating the fast fourier transform of time.

plot(log10(T),log10(Y.^2),'R')

After the execution of the program, I get the spectral plot, but a warning too: Warning: Imaginary parts of complex X and/or Y arguments ignored.

This means imaginary parts has been excluded. I am keen interested in, if I am be able to get the plot which will involve both real and imaginary parts. I will be much thankful, if anyone take interst to clear my problem.

Answer 1

[Wayne King]

That is because you want to plot only the magnitude of the DFT coefficients, or the magnitudes squared

 plot(log10(abs(T)),log10(abs(Y).^2),'r')

I have no idea why you are taking the Fourier transform of your time vector, that is not the frequency vector.

You need to create a meaningful frequency vector by knowing the number of points and the sampling frequency (interval)

   t = 0:0.001:1-0.001; %sampling interval is 0.001
   Fs = 1000;
   x = cos(2*pi*100*t)+randn(size(t));
   xdft = fft(x);
   freq = 0:Fs/length(x):Fs/2;
   xdft = xdft(1:length(x)/2+1);
   plot(freq,20*log10(abs(xdft)))

Of course in the DFT coefficients, you certainly have the imaginary parts.

[Rizwana Junaid]

thanks a lot for ur reply.

If suppose instead of taking square of Y and take square of X such as

X=x(:,1).^2;

Y = fft(X,n);

T=fft2(t,n);

plot(log10(T),log10(Y),'R')

i still get the same command. Is it that because of squaing of X?

[Rizwana Junaid]

Is there any way to get the imaginary parts also by altering any steps in the program.

[Wayne King]

You're squaring the original data, but then you're taking the Fourier transform, the Fourier transform is in general complex-valued. It does not matter whether you square the time data first.

[Rizwana Junaid]

Thank you so much for your responsive act.

I still dont understand. suppose If the original data is squared first X=x^2,

then fft of X is performed which have all the imaginary and real parts. then why does it not give the imaginary parts? and gives the warning.

please reply

[Wayne King]

The warning is because you are trying to use plot(), which is for 1-D data with a complex-valued function. You can plot the real and imaginary parts separately:

   t = 0:0.001:1-0.001; %sampling interval is 0.001
   Fs = 1000;
   x = cos(2*pi*100*t)+randn(size(t));
   xdft = fft(x);
   freq = 0:Fs/length(x):Fs/2;
   xdft = xdft(1:length(x)/2+1);
   plot(freq,real(xdft),'b'); 
   hold on;
   plot(freq,imag(xdft),'r'); legend('Real','Imaginary')