Converting Mathcad to Matlab

I have a book with some good radar equations in it. However, everything is in Mathcad - I use Matlab. I've been converting everything I use from Mathcad to Matlab. I've run into one I'm not sure how to convert.

Mathcad has a function called root. The equation I'm interested in converting is: root(f1(u) - sqrt(0.5), u, 0.3, 0.7

As I understand it, 'root' returns the value of u to make the function f1 equal to zero. With 0.3 and 0.7 being specified, root finds u on this interval.

How do I accomplish the same thing using Matlab?

Thanks, Kim

[SKar]

Hey Kim,

Is there a way to convert automatically a Mathcad file to a matlab file?

Thank you,

Stratos

Answer 1

[Eric]

Look at the documentation for Matlab's fzero() function. For example, to find the zero of cosine between 1 and 2:

fun = @cos; % function
x0 = [1 2]; % initial interval
x = fzero(fun,x0)

x is returned with a value of 1.570796326794897.

For your case you'll use something like

fun = @(x)f1(x) - sqrt(0.5);

and of course you'll define x0 to be [0.3 0.7].

Note that the documentation for Matlab R2013a has a typo. In my code above where I defined x0, the documentation actually defines this as x (i.e., they forgot the 0).

Good luck,

Eric

[Kim]

It has taken me forever to get back to this. When I tried your example it worked fine, when I tried mine it didn't. Got the following: >> x0 = [0.3 0.7]; >> fun = @(u)f1(u) - sqrt(0.5); >> x = fzero(fun,x0) Error using fzero (line 233) FZERO cannot continue because user supplied function_handle ==> @(u)f1(u)-sqrt(0.5) failed with the error below.

 Undefined function 'f1' for input arguments of type 'double'.

[Matt Kindig]

The error is simple: you didn't define a function 'f1' anywhere. Did you create a file called f1.m with your function? What does this:

which f1

give you?

[Kim]

Yep, that was the problem. In my problem f1(u) = sinc(pi*u). So I changed what I did to: fun = @(u) sinc(u) - sqrt(0.5); u0 = [0.3 0.7]; x = fzero(fun,u0)

Note - I had to learn that in mathcad sinc is straight sin(x)/x and for matlab it is sin(pi*x)/(pi*x) - so had to take care of pi.

But now it works.