Nan and Inf with butterworth filter

• I want to create a butterworth filter of order 10 to extract thewaves having frequency between 8-30Hz.
• The signal which I want to filter has been sampled at 512Hz.
• This is how I am using creating and using my filter.

[b,a] = butter(10, [8/256 30/256], 'bandpass')
filt=filter(b,a,series1);

But I get inf and NaN values. So I wanted to know am I using it correctly? Any tips and pointers will help Thanks in adavance

Answer 1

[Star Strider]

First, see if a lower-order filter works. Use the freqz function to analyse it before you use it on your data.

Second, see what the results of these commands are:

ser1nan = length(find(isnan(series1)))
ser1inf = length(find(isinf(series1)))

If they’re not both zero, you have to figure out what you want to do with the NaN and Inf values.

[Simranjit Singh]

Hi Strider,

Thanks for the info. I tried with the following(order 6):

[b,a] = butter(6, [8/256 30/256], 'bandpass')
filt=filter(b,a,series1);
The freqz function gives the right cut off power.There are no Nan and Inf in my inputs. 
I am also attaching my ip and op file for extra info.

Thanks! Your help is much appreciated.

[Star Strider]

Please upload your input data as a single-column text file. The file ‘ip.txt’ is your input as a multi-line row vector copied from the Command Window.

Answer 2

[Honglei Chen]

If your signal does not contain nan or inf, then likely this is due to the numerical stability of transfer function designed by butter algorithm. You can try the following code to design a Butterworth filter in SOS form, which improves the the numerical robustness and see if it addresses your issue.

myFilter = design(fdesign.bandpass('N,F3dB1,F3dB2',6,8,30,500),'butter');
y = filter(hd,series1);

HTH

[Star Strider]

I’d forgotten about the advantages of the SOS form. Thanks!

[Harshavardhan Vijaya Kumar]

I am facing a similar issue with the butterworth filter. I am a Researcher using Matlab for Noise Analysis, The filter appears to behave highly abnormal at low frequency bandwidths, Will the SOS form of Butterworth filters be any better ? I have just started learning matlab. Please Advice