How do I generate a spectrogram of a 1D signal in python?

Question

I'm not sure how to do this and I was given an example, spectrogram e.g. but this is in 2D.

I have code here that generates a mix of frequencies and I can pick these out in the fft, how may I see these in a spectrogram? I appreciate that the frequencies in my example don't change over time; so does this mean I'll see a straight line across the spectrogram?

my code and the output image:

# create a wave with 1Mhz and 0.5Mhz frequencies
dt = 2e-9
t = np.arange(0, 10e-6, dt)
y = np.cos(2 * pi * 1e6 * t) + (np.cos(2 * pi * 2e6 *t) * np.cos(2 * pi * 2e6 * t))
y *= np.hanning(len(y))
yy = np.concatenate((y, ([0] * 10 * len(y))))

# FFT of this
Fs = 1 / dt  # sampling rate, Fs = 500MHz = 1/2ns
n = len(yy)  # length of the signal
k = np.arange(n)
T = n / Fs
frq = k / T  # two sides frequency range
frq = frq[range(n / 2)]  # one side frequency range
Y = fft(yy) / n  # fft computing and normalization
Y = Y[range(n / 2)] / max(Y[range(n / 2)])

# plotting the data
subplot(3, 1, 1)
plot(t * 1e3, y, 'r')
xlabel('Time (micro seconds)')
ylabel('Amplitude')
grid()

# plotting the spectrum
subplot(3, 1, 2)
plot(frq[0:600], abs(Y[0:600]), 'k')
xlabel('Freq (Hz)')
ylabel('|Y(freq)|')
grid()

# plotting the specgram
subplot(3, 1, 3)
Pxx, freqs, bins, im = specgram(y, NFFT=512, Fs=Fs, noverlap=10)
show()

Answer 1

What you have is technically correct, but you just need to look at a signal with an interesting spectrogram. For that, you need the frequency to vary with time. (And for that to happen, you need many oscillations, since it takes a few oscillations to establish a frequency, and then you need many of these to have the frequency change with time in an interesting way.)

Below I've modified you code as little as possible to get a frequency that does something interesting (fscale just ramps the frequency over time). I'm posting all the code to get this to work, but I only change three of the top four lines.

# create a wave with 1Mhz and 0.5Mhz frequencies
dt = 40e-9
t = np.arange(0, 1000e-6, dt)
fscale = t/max(t)
y = np.cos(2 * pi * 1e6 * t*fscale) + (np.cos(2 * pi * 2e6 *t*fscale) * np.cos(2 * pi * 2e6 * t*fscale))
y *= np.hanning(len(y))
yy = np.concatenate((y, ([0] * 10 * len(y))))

# FFT of this
Fs = 1 / dt  # sampling rate, Fs = 500MHz = 1/2ns
n = len(yy)  # length of the signal
k = np.arange(n)
T = n / Fs
frq = k / T  # two sides frequency range
frq = frq[range(n / 2)]  # one side frequency range
Y = fft(yy) / n  # fft computing and normalization
Y = Y[range(n / 2)] / max(Y[range(n / 2)])

# plotting the data
subplot(3, 1, 1)
plot(t * 1e3, y, 'r')
xlabel('Time (micro seconds)')
ylabel('Amplitude')
grid()

# plotting the spectrum
subplot(3, 1, 2)
plot(frq[0:600], abs(Y[0:600]), 'k')
xlabel('Freq (Hz)')
ylabel('|Y(freq)|')
grid()

# plotting the specgram
subplot(3, 1, 3)
Pxx, freqs, bins, im = specgram(y, NFFT=512, Fs=Fs, noverlap=10)
show()

Also, note here that only the spectrogram is useful. If you can see a good waveform or spectra, the spectrogram probably won't be interesting: 1) if the waveform is clear you probably don't have enough data and time over which the frequency is both well defined and changes enough to be interesting; 2) if the full spectra is clear, you probably don't have enough variation in frequency for the spectrogram, since the spectrum is basically just an average of what you see changing with time in the spectrogram.

If you really want to see the spectrogram of your original signal, you just need to zoom on the y-axis to see the peaks you are expecting (note that the spectrogram y-axis is 2.5e8, must larger than in your spectrum):

Answer 2

To get what you're after:

1) sample the 1d waveform at high frequency (at least 5 times the frequency of its highest frequency component)

2) use blocks of samples (powers of 2 like 1024,16384,etc) to compute an FFT

3) for each spectrum plot a vertical line of pixels whose color represents the amplitude of each frequency.

4) repeat steps 2 and 3 for each block of samples.

In your case, the plot has a whole rainbow of colors which should not be present with only a couple very distinct frequencies. Your spectral plot has rather wide bands around the peaks but that could be due to a low sampling rate and smooth plotting.

Answer 3

I am just starting on Python 3.6 Thank you for the Spectrogram sample code!

However with Python 3.6 I struggled a bit to make this sample spectrogram code to work (functions calls and float division I have edited code so it now works on python 3.6 for my python newbies pals out there.

Enjoy

'''
Original Script for Python 2.7
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19052324/how-do-i-generate-a-spectrogram-of-a-1d-signal-in-python
Modified in August 2017 for Python 3.6
Python 2.7 two integers / Division generate Integer
Python 3.6 two integers / Division generate Float
Python 3.6 two integers // Division generate integer
'''


import numpy as np
from scipy import fftpack
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt


dt = 40e-9
t = np.arange(0, 1000e-6, dt)
fscale = t/max(t)
y = np.cos(2 * np.pi * 1e6 * t*fscale) + (np.cos(2 * np.pi * 2e6 *t*fscale) * np.cos(2 * np.pi * 2e6 * t*fscale))
y *= np.hanning(len(y))
yy = np.concatenate((y, ([0] * 10 * len(y))))

# FFT of this
Fs = 1 / dt  # sampling rate, Fs = 500MHz = 1/2ns
n = len(yy)  # length of the signal
k = np.arange(n)
T = n / Fs
frq = k / T  # two sides frequency range
frq = frq[range(n // 2)]  # one side frequency range
Y = fftpack.fft(yy) / n  # fft computing and normalization
Y = Y[range(n // 2)] / max(Y[range(n // 2)])

# plotting the data
plt.subplot(3, 1, 1)
plt.plot(t * 1e3, y, 'r')
plt.xlabel('Time (micro seconds)')
plt.ylabel('Amplitude')
plt.grid()

# plotting the spectrum
plt.subplot(3, 1, 2)
plt.plot(frq[0:600], abs(Y[0:600]), 'k')
plt.xlabel('Freq (Hz)')
plt.ylabel('|Y(freq)|')
plt.grid()

# plotting the specgram
plt.subplot(3, 1, 3)
Pxx, freqs, bins, im = plt.specgram(y, NFFT=512, Fs=Fs, noverlap=10)
plt.show()