Top 20 MATLAB Project Ideas

Millions of engineers and scientists worldwide use MATLAB to analyze and design the systems and products transforming our world. Such huge usage leads to some very interesting prospects in designing. This list of 20 MATLAB projects ideas range over some of the solutions that use or can use MATLAB. After all, the list of applications of such a software is endless.

Lossless Image Compression

Cameras are nowadays being provided with more and more megapixels to improve the quality of captured images. With improvement in image quality, size of the image file also increases. One of the applications of image compression with MATLAB using a graphical user interface is described in this project. This project proposes a technique to compress the captured image to reduce its size while maintaining its quality.

This project is available at: Lossless Image Compression

Huffman Encoding and Decoding

Encoding the information before transmission is necessary to ensure data security and efficient delivery of the information. Huffman algorithm is a popular encoding method used in electronics communication systems. It is widely used in all the mainstream compression formats that you might encounter. The MATLAB project presented here encodes and decodes the information and also outputs the values of entropy, efficiency and frequency probabilities of characters present in the data stream.

This project is available at: Huffman Encoding and Decoding

Artificial Neural Network Simulation

Artificial neural network, in essence, is an attempt to simulate the brain. When the user enters the inputs (say, p1, p2 and p3) and the expected corresponding outputs (say, t1, t2 and t3) in the program, the program trains the system and gives a final weight. The final weight is computed to get the final expected output. This program is an attempt to understand the basics of artificial neural network and how one can use it for further applications.

This project is available at: Artificial Neural Network Simulation

Circuit Design Calculator

While designing electronic circuits, component values are calculated using formulae from the circuit’s theory. These calculations waste a lot of time. This circuit design calculator software developed in MATLAB helps you solve, analyse and determine circuit design with capacitors, inductors, resistors, diodes, transistors and other components. The software can provide answers to many complex analogue and digital circuit design problems.

This project is available at: Circuit Design Calculator

Antenna Analysis and Design

Today, almost all applications are expected to be wireless, consume very little power and have high data retention capability. A good design of the antenna can result in a high degree of efficiency, better directivity and more beamwidth for long-distance transmission without much loss of information. This program written in MATLAB helps in designing antenna arrays.

This project is available at: Antenna Analysis and Design

Recognition of Vehicle Number Plate

This approach presents a method for detecting and identifying the vehicle number plate for the detection of authorized and unauthorized vehicles. This project implements two methods namely plate location extraction and plate characters segmentation.  Video surveillance system is used for security purpose as well as monitoring systems. But detection of moving object is a challenging part of video surveillance. proposes a method for the detection and identification of vehicle number plate that will help in the detection of number plates of authorized and unauthorized vehicles.

This project is available at: Recognition of Vehicle Number Plate

Analogue Clock

NASA might get a fancy digital-count display, retire the analogue clock from Apollo era but the passion for the analogue clock does not end. An analogue clock has moving hands. The smaller (hours) hand and travels 30° in one hour whereas the longer (minutes) hand travels 360° in an hour. The seconds hand rotates with a step of 6°. Using this in MATLAB, you could design this for yourself. MATLAB has a good collection of graphics commands for plotting and analysing complex signals.

This project is available at: Analogue Clock

Real-Time Face Detection

Object detection and tracking are important in many computer vision applications, including activity recognition, automotive safety and surveillance. Presented here is an object detection system that can detect a human face, eyes and upper body. This program can be used to detect on pressing corresponding buttons.

This project is available at: Real-Time Face Detection

Face Counter

If you try to count a large number of people in a hall, you may take time to count them and probably also make a mistake. This next project helps count the number of people present in a meeting hall or classroom at a time. The program logic is also applicable in other applications including automatic temperature control which depends on the number of persons in a room. Video camera plays a very important role in this project.

This project is available at: Face Counter

Colour-Sensing Robot

MATLAB is a very powerful tool and plays an important role in image processing. Most image-processing techniques involve treating the image as a two-dimensional signal and applying standard signal-processing techniques to it. This MATLAB-based project processes images taken by the camera and extracts the position of a red-coloured object.

This project is available at: Colour-Sensing Robot

Gain and Noise Calculations of Cascaded Systems

Parameters like noise, signal-to-noise ratio and gain play an important role in the performance of communication systems. In this project, MATLAB software is used to design a calculator for the calculation of noise factors. Such type of calculators can be easily created by playing with the array and matrix properties of MATLAB, and can be used for any cascade system with any number of stages.

This project is available at: Gain and Noise Calculations of Cascaded Systems

Plotting with MATLAB

This project deals with 2D and 3D graphics plotting in MATLAB. It also explains the audio signal manipulations using plotting in MATLAB. To use the ‘plot’ function in MATLAB, you should first make sure that the matrices/vectors you are trying to use are of equal dimensions. Familiarisation with basic MATLAB objects like vectors and matrices will help in understanding the subject better before delving into details.

This project is available at: Plotting with MATLAB

Implementation of Fast Fourier Transform

FFTs are of great importance to a wide variety of applications including digital signal processing (such as linear filtering, correlation analysis and spectrum analysis) and solving partial differential equations to algorithms for quick multiplication of large integers. This project shows an example to explain what it means to look at a signal in two domains.

This project is available at: Implementation of Fast Fourier Transform

Digital FIR Filters

This utility program can be a handy tool for anyone working in the field of signal processing with interest in implementation of the project through C++ programming. In order to understand the depth of designing an FIR filter using window functions, coding in C++ is a must. Described here is a C++ implementation of finite impulse response (FIR) filters using Blackman window method.

This project is available at: Digital FIR Filters

Hearing Aids System

Approximately 10% of the world’s population suffers from some type of hearing loss, yet only a small percentage of this statistic use a hearing aid. Traditional analog hearing aids are similar to a simple radio. This project presents a simulation of simple digital hearing aid developed using MATLAB programming language. This digital hearing aid system is design to adapt for mild and moderate hearing loss patient. It allows different gains to be set to map different levels of hearing loss.