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Heaviside Unit Step Function

The unit step function (also known as the Heaviside function) is a discontinuous function whose value is zero for negative arguments and one for positive arguments. The Heaviside function is the integral of the Dirac delta function.

 
This concept can be mathematically expressed as:

Definition of the step function - Heaviside unit step

Our current intention is not to deal with all the formal details.  In this brief article we're going to deal with it in an informal way, in order to just operate with it and create some plots in Matlab.

This function is commonly utilized in control theory or digital signal processing (dsp) to  represent a signal that switches on at a specified time and remains switched on indefinitely. 

The function depends on real input parameters. We can define the function having a scalar number as an input. For example, let’s create a discrete plot without using any special toolbox in Matlab.

function y = step_fun(n)
% We assume a scalar input
% Our default output value is 0

y = 0; 

% We change our output to 1 if the argument is greater 
% than or equal to 0

if n >= 0
    y = 1;

end


If we want to get a plot from there, we have to iterate utilizing real numbers. If the input is an integer, then the function will be a discrete one. To stress the fact that we're working with discrete functions here, we'll use 'stem' instead of 'plot'.


Let's call the function from another script. For example: 

% We iterate from -5 to 5 using only integers
for n = -5 : 5
    y = step_fun(n);
    stem(n, y)
    hold
on
end
% We adjust our axis values just to visualize better
axis([-5 5 -1 2])

and we get

unit step function: result from a discrete iteration

Now, let’s say that we have a vector (not a scalar) as an input. We want to calculate the Heaviside function for all of the values included in the vector. We can create another function to considerate this approach:
 

function y = heaviside(n)
% We assume a vector input 

% Our default output value is 0
y = 0 * n;
% Now, we find values in n greater than or equal to 0
y(find(n >= 0)) = 1;

 
We don’t need a loop now, so our process has been simplified a lot. Let's use this new approach.

n = -5 : 5;
y = heaviside(n);
stem(n, y)
axis([-5 5 -1 2])

 
The result is again: 

vector output for the Heaviside function

 

If we want to calculate y = 4H(n) + 3H(n-2), in a range of integers that go from -10 to 10, we can do simply this: 

n = -10 : 10;
y = 4 * heaviside(n) + 3*heaviside(n-2);
stem(n, y)
axis([-15 15 -1 8])  

and the result is:

 arithmetic operations on the Heaviside unit step function

We can see that every integer in the domain of the function counts to add to the final result, and that happens when the argument is zero for each term. The first term, 4H(n), adds a height of 4 (coefficient) at n = 0; the second term, 3H(n-2), adds a magnitude of 3 at n = 2.


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