Customer Reviews

Fundamentals of Signals and Systems Using MATLAB

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

The information in this book is difficult enough to learn, and the way it is presented here compounds the problem.
The Information and examples are not explained thoroughly or completely (to compressed) can be very over whelming.
There are many practice problems at the end of each chapter (great) there is one problem ...there are no ANSWERS???. I was not able to find a solutions manual. I even emailed the author (I got no reply). Very difficult to know if your solving the Practice Problems correctly if you don't have any solved practice prolems let alone any answers. I did manage to pick up some of what the author was trying to say, but i had to read each chapter numerous times. The website referred to in the book has a few solved example problems for each chapter, but many are hand written and could not be interpreted. In all honesty I was using this book in conjunction with a self study coarse and did not have the benefit of an instructor.I would not reccomend using this book alone,when trying to grasp this subject.

The fact that this book is written in plain language is great, it makes a lot of concepts a lot easier to digest. However, the material here is extremely patchy. As a student learning this for the first time, I've found that this textbook isn't exactly the most effective due to the holes between content areas. The author seems to go into detail about things that seem unimportant, while he/she skims over the real meat of the subject. And what's worse is the fact that there are no worked out examples. If there were more worked examples, concepts might click amongst the patchy conceptual explanations. There is MATLAB scattered throughout the text, which I've found useful at times, but it too is not explained well-enough. All in all, this is not a text that I recommend to those in their introductory signal processing courses, rather, I recommend this text to those who have already taken introductory signal processing classes and are in need of a review text. As a review for those already in the know, this text seems great.

This book would be excellent for someone who is already familiar with signals but is not good for the student who is learning the topic. Very few examples and no student solutions manual makes it a hard sell. For those after theory only.

Awful for a control system course (which is what it is intended for and used for at Georgia Tech). The only good control/systems sections were on root locus and Bode design. The first half of the book is on refresher material from DSP (Laplace transforms, etc.). Try Gene Franklin's Feedback Design book for a much more sophisticated approach (with examples!) on actual control systems.

I used this at VCU because my professor had attended GA Tech which is written by the professors there. It has no solutions to any "practice" problems. It doesnt go into enough detail and assumes that you already know this stuff. What's the point then? I couldn't recommend this to anyone. Beware for those who are purchasing it.

I ordered this book using one day shipping and it arrived <36 hours later... very impressive (and useful when you want to keep up with a college class without also being had by the bookstore). Packaging was okay: shrink-wrapped to a sturdy piece of cardboard and placed inside a box. Would have preferred some sort of padding, peanuts, etc., but book arrive undamaged. Print and paper quality is overall good, and size is acceptable, but the binding is iffy - especially concerning the reference pages on the inner and outer cover (constants, etc. bound in right after the title page). The book sat on a table and was only opened to read, and these inside first few pages are already 3/4 of the way out of their binding! I'm slightly miffed that a book at this price-point does that, but overall fairly satisfied.

As a first time learner of Signals and Systems, this is a very poor book. Examples can be confusing, and the web portion of the book is dated. Hopefully you don't get this book asigned...

The book is short and mostly clear. The biggest problem with it is no odd or even answers in the back. Without this it makes it nearly impossible to learn since you do not know whether your answers are right or not. Also, it does not include an index of fourier to real function graphs with their fourier phases. These graphs make learning transforms infinitely easier. It also has few examples that help clarify the material. On the plus side, if this is a review or second time looking at this material, it is a great reference/review book.

I am using this book for an undergraduate course on signals. I don't why it was selected; I would strongly hesitate to recommend it to anyone new to the subject, or even as a reference. Hopefully there are better texts that have been written on this subject.

The explanations given in the text introducing each topic lack important detail needed for someone unfamiliar with the mathematics. For example, Chapter 6 on Laplace transforms introduces the "region of convergence", "poles", etc., only mathematically, and with a casual reference to the "complex plane". I originally saw these and had no idea what was meant, but after seeing them explained graphically on an s-plane, the text suddenly made sense.

The Matlab examples are very brief, and the book would benefit from a chapter in the Appendix introducing Matlab and its usage with signal processing that could be referred back to as you read the book (particularly the more advanced usage of fft() etc). The scattering of code throughout the book, without so much as a function list, makes it mostly useless as a Matlab reference for signals.

Comments about the worked examples not being available; these are usually suppressed for this type of text so that instructors of courses can use them in exams and tutorial problems.

This text may be of benefit to someone who works in the field, and needs to quickly recall how to perform certain transforms.

The plain, unfettered language of this book demystified Signals and Controls for me. The examples and applications in MATLAB are direct and meaningful. This book will be the first place I look for information about signal processing in the future.