Use Zero Padding to find hidden peaks

1. How does zero padding affect DFT?
2. What does zero padding do to FFT?
3. How to do zero padding in matlab?
4. Does zero padding increase frequency resolution?

How does zero padding affect DFT?

You can interpolate the DFT by zero padding. Zero padding enables you to obtain more accurate amplitude estimates of resolvable signal components. On the other hand, zero padding does not improve the spectral (frequency) resolution of the DFT. The resolution is determined by the number of samples and the sample rate.

What does zero padding do to FFT?

Zero padding allows one to use a longer FFT, which will produce a longer FFT result vector. A longer FFT result has more frequency bins that are more closely spaced in frequency.

How to do zero padding in matlab?

Zero-padding means that you append an array of zeros to the end of your input signal before you fft it. Luckily, the fft command within Matlab makes it very easy to zero-pad.

Does zero padding increase frequency resolution?

In summary, the use of zero-padding corresponds to the time-limited assumption for the data frame, and more zero-padding yields denser interpolation of the frequency samples around the unit circle. Sometimes people will say that zero-padding in the time domain yields higher spectral resolution in the frequency domain.