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I have a problem involving cut-off frequency.

I have a voice message in an audio file .mat which have an eletromagnetic noise. I am trying to recover the original message by applying digital Butterworth filter with MatLab. To this, besides of design the Butterworth filter, also I have to find the cut-off frequency to eliminate all, or partially, the electromagnetic noise.

The picture below shows the Fourier Spectrum of the voice message with the electromagnetic noise. How could I find the cut-off frequency to eliminate the noise? Thanks in advance!

Sampling frequency = 44.8 kHz.

enter image description here

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  • $\begingroup$ um, that spectrum doesn't look good at all. I don't think a simple butterworth will do here (it's questionable a butterworth design is appropriate at all – you probably want some multi band-pass filter, but it's hard to say without knowing the properties of your noise). Looking at this rectangular nightmare, I'd presume you have something very peculiarly shaped in the time-domain signal, not something you'd cancel in frequency domain. $\endgroup$
    – Marcus Müller
    Commented Nov 26, 2019 at 18:54
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    $\begingroup$ @MarcusMüller that noise? seems from a modulated sinc() function in time. Why is it there ? homework/project may be :-). I assumed that the noisy looking part towards the DC from the pulse was the message. Otherwise the message is a sinc() :-) $\endgroup$
    – Fat32
    Commented Nov 26, 2019 at 19:25
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    $\begingroup$ yesss, and the Gibb's on that signal looks incredibly textbook. And that means the thing is, even if it's not just a single impulse/burst (might be an elegantly arranged comb...), easy to spot in time domain $\endgroup$
    – Marcus Müller
    Commented Nov 26, 2019 at 19:27

1 Answer 1

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I think you consider that pulse in the spectrum as the noise. Then you should remove it by a lowpass filter of cutoff frequency $$ f_c = 5 ~\text{kHz.}$$

Slightly less than this should be used for guarding against the transition width of the lowpass filter. So you better select something like $4.8$ kHz for the lowpass filter cutoff frequency.

Note that your sampling frequency $F_s$, probably, is $44.1$ kHz and not $44.8$ kHz. Then your digital frequency for cutoff into the Matlab functions will be: $$f_{cd} = \frac{ 2 f_c }{F_s} $$

with the given values of $F_s$ and $F_c$ your digital cutoff will be:

$$f_{cd} = \frac{ 2 \times 5 \times 10^3 }{44.1 10^3} = 0.2268 $$

or better

$$f_{cd} = \frac{ 2 \times 4.8 \times 10^3 }{44.1 10^3} = 0.2177 $$

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    $\begingroup$ Shouldn't it be $\frac{2\pi f_c}{F_s}$? $\endgroup$
    – David
    Commented Nov 26, 2019 at 18:37
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    $\begingroup$ @David No. $f_c$ and $F_s$ are in Hz. and $f_{cd}$ is between $0$ and $1$. $\endgroup$
    – Fat32
    Commented Nov 26, 2019 at 18:39
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    $\begingroup$ Oh of course. Glossed over the 'into the Matlab functions' part. $\endgroup$
    – David
    Commented Nov 26, 2019 at 19:05
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    $\begingroup$ Thanks @Fat32 your help was fundamental. Thank you so much! $\endgroup$
    – mbenencase
    Commented Nov 26, 2019 at 20:12

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