You can explicitly check for the existense of a variable in a .mat-file:
qwe = whos('-file','your-filename.mat','cDA_External_Speed')
if that variable doesn't exist whos will return an empty array, otherwise you'll get a struct with contenst something like this:
qwe =
struct with fields:
name: 'Tr'
size: [125 1]
bytes: 1000
class: 'double'
global: 0
sparse: 0
complex: 0
nesting: [1×1 struct]
persistent: 0
HTH