How can I sum up several step plots into one plot?

My program has several step plots(yaxis-power consumed) with overlapping time ranges. I need to put them together to see which time instant consumes the maximum combined power. Please help.

[Andrew Reibold]

This should be pretty simple, so you will need to be quite specific of what part you are having issues with.

In Matlab you can add all your arrays using 'array1 + array2' if they are the same size. If not, you can interpolate and add if you want using interp1. The plotting command in matlab is 'plot' and the format is plot(x,y). You can also use 'max(myarray)' to find the max of the summed array

[Kaushika]

The problem is interpolating will change the shape of my signal. suppose step signal 'a' has strength of 3 from 30 to 50 seconds and 'b' has a strength of 5 from 40 to 55 seconds, I just want to make the strength of 'a' zero from 51-55sec and similarly for 'b', zero from 30-39sec. Is there any command for this?

[Star Strider]

Are all your signals recorded over the same time interval at exactly the same times, or are at different times? Posting a representative sample of your signals (times and signal strength) would help. (Use .csv format if possible, since those are easier to read.)

[dpb]

If the signals are overlaid on a common time frame (and you can interpolate to do that without changing the shape if the breakpoints are given explicitly in the time series) then it appears you're just looking for

S=max(s1,s2);

for the two (or more) signals.

[Kaushika]

Thanks for all your reply. It was very useful. I got it done using interp1 and sychronize