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What Is A MATLAB, Applications, Alternatives, Advantages, Disadvantages

Posted on by Chetan Shidling

Hello guys, welcome back to our blog. In this article, we will discuss what is a MATLAB, its applications of MATLAB, its advantages, and disadvantages, and what is the purpose of using MATLAB Simulink.

If you have any electrical, electronics, and computer science doubts, then ask questions. You can also catch me on Instagram – CS Electrical & Electronics.

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What Is A MATLAB

MATLAB stands for the MATrix LaBoratory. It is a specialized-purpose computer program optimized to perform scientific and engineering calculations. MAT-LAB is also called a technical programming language. It began with simple matrix manipulation and was built with the capability of solving any technical problem.

It is a proprietary programming language that is developed by MathWorks. MAT-LAB is not available for free or it is not open source software, you need to pay some amount for this. MAT-LAB offers a very extensive library of predefined functions to make technical programming tasks simple, easy, and effective.

MATLAB is preferred to other languages like C, FORTRAN, etc. MAT-LAB can be interfaced with different kinds of hardware like Arduino, TMS320C6713, FPGA, NI DAQ, etc to enhance the data processing capabilities of MATLAB.

It is beneficial for people working in the field like research, development, and design challenges. MATLAB can solve many problems that are faced by engineers and scientists such as pressure to meet deadlines while deciding design tradeoffs, developing a variety of projects and tasks that are rarely straightforward, the proliferation of products and technologies, experimenting and programming are expensive, etc these all challenges can be solved by using MATLAB.

It has many capabilities such as data access, numerical computation, data analysis and visualization, application development and deployment, programming and algorithm development, etc.

  1. Data access – You can access data of any format like excel or from the database. Also from external hardware, you can access the data.
  2. Data analysis and visualization – You can do preprocessing, fast and accurate analysis (for correlation, Fourier analysis, and filtering, basic stats, and curve fitting), and built-in graphics for engineering and science (you can do 2-D plots, 3-D graphics, and volume visualization).

Advantages Of MATLAB

  1. Easy to use – You can learn this software very easily.
  2. Huge community – It has huge community support, you go and visit the Mathworks website there will find many simulations.
  3. Platform independent
  4. Pre-defined functions reduce engineers’ time.
  5. Device-independent plotting
  6. A graphical user interface will support GUI.
  7. MAT_LAB compiler

Disadvantages Of MATLAB

  1. The speed of MAT-LAB is slow, you can overcome this by properly structuring the MAT-LAB program.
  2. It is not open-source software, click here to check plans – MAT-LAB.

Alternatives To MATLAB

We all know that MAT-LAB is a famous and good software, but the cost of MATLAB software is high. The other alternatives to MAT-LAB are Octave, Scilab, and Freemat.

Applications Of MATLAB

01. Control Design – It is used for model-based design of control systems, analysis of algorithms for modeling and simulation, and code generation for embedded systems.

02. Digital Signal Processing And Communication Design – Used for system-level design of DSP and communication systems, from algorithm development to simulation, rapid prototyping, and verification.

03. Technical Computing – It is used for analysis, mathematical computation, visualization, and algorithm development.

04. Test & Measurement – For collecting data and communicating from external hardware.

05. Image Processing – It is also used for image processing from data import to analysis, enhancement, and development of the application.

Different Industries Using MATLAB

  1. Aerospace and defense
  2. Automotive
  3. Education
  4. Communication
  5. Biotech, and Medical

The first version was launched in the year 1984.

I hope this article may help you all a lot. Thank you for reading. If you have any doubts related to this article, then ask questions.

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About The Author

Chetan Shidling

Automotive | Technical Blogger | Engineer | Content Creator

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