To get finer resolution in the frequency domain, we can zero-pad the signal, that is, append zeroes to the end of the time-domain signal.
zpf = 8; % zero-padding factor x = [cos(2*pi*f*nT),zeros(1,(zpf-1)*N)]; % zero-padded X = fft(x); % interpolated spectrum magX = abs(X); % magnitude spectrum ... % waveform plot as before nfft = zpf*N; % FFT size = new frequency grid size fni = [0:1.0/nfft:1-1.0/nfft]; % normalized freq axis subplot(3,1,2); % with interpolation, we can use solid lines '-': plot(fni,magX,'-k'); grid on; ... spec = 20*log10(magX); % spectral magnitude in dB % clip below at -40 dB: spec = max(spec,-40*ones(1,length(spec))); ... % plot as before