Calculate autocorrelation using FFT in Matlab

Just like you stated, take the fft and multiply pointwise by its complex conjugate, then use the inverse fft (or in the case of cross-correlation of two signals: Corr(x,y) <=> FFT(x)FFT(y)*)

x = rand(100,1);
len = length(x);

%# autocorrelation
nfft = 2^nextpow2(2*len-1);
r = ifft( fft(x,nfft) .* conj(fft(x,nfft)) );

%# rearrange and keep values corresponding to lags: -(len-1):+(len-1)
r = [r(end-len+2:end) ; r(1:len)];

%# compare with MATLAB's XCORR output
all( (xcorr(x)-r) < 1e-10 )

In fact, if you look at the code of xcorr.m, that's exactly what it's doing (only it has to deal with all the cases of padding, normalizing, vector/matrix input, etc...)

By the Wiener–Khinchin theorem, the power-spectral density (PSD) of a function is the Fourier transform of the autocorrelation. For deterministic signals, the PSD is simply the magnitude-squared of the Fourier transform. See also the convolution theorem.

When it comes to discrete Fourier transforms (i.e. using FFTs), you actually get the cyclic autocorrelation. In order to get proper (linear) autocorrelation, you must zero-pad the original data to twice its original length before taking the Fourier transform. So something like:

x = [ ... ];
x_pad = [x zeros(size(x))];
X     = fft(x_pad);
X_psd = abs(X).^2;
r_xx = ifft(X_psd);