Customer Reviews

Linear Dynamic Systems and Signals

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I had Zoran Gajic as a professor for Linear Systems and Signals, and I has this book as the text. This occurance is usually frusterating as the discourse given on the blackboard in class is usually identical to the text that is presented in the book; this case was no different, and consequentially I rarely attended the lectures. That being said, the book was sufficient for self-study. The approach of the texts is definition/problem formulation, proofs when needed, followed by computational examples. The progression of the book seems logical for the most part but it tends to read in a dry way with little physical or engineering insight, and the examples are mostly computational in nature, with little motivation behind them-- likewise for the exercises. Also alot of the derivations for properties of the various transforms are so similar that reading them all makes for much tedium. That being said, the book IS concise enough for self-study and there are numerous examples; the examples are like the exercises, so working through the book is fairly easy. Topics covered are fourier transform (derived as a limiting case of the fourier series) in system analysis, Laplace trasform in system analysis, one sided z-transform, transfer functions in jw s and z-domains, Partial Fractions methods for computing inverse transforms, Properties of the convolution integral and Convolutional theorems for the Laplace Z and Fourier transform, topics from communications, topics from DSP, and an intro to the 'modern' state space form of linear systems theory(representation employing matrix/linear algebra for handling systems of higher dimensionality). To compliment this book read the first three chapters of B.P. Lathi's "Modern Digital and Analog Communications Systems"-- his style fills in the much needed physical insight, along with interesting and fun to read comments and practical examples and silly but insightful analogies to life outside of math and engineering.

the author does a very poor job of explaining signals. I don't know why schools have to use such texts when there are so many other wonderful books. The problems at the back of the chapters are many times unrelated to the formulas in the chapters. On many occasions the author skips crucial details, and jumps on to something else. He seems to be in some sort of a big rush to get over it. It gives a student the sense that he is either forced to write the book or is just too bored of teaching signals. I doubt if he even has any patience in real life, let alone writing books. I had to buy another signals book from amazon.com to understand the material. This book alone is a disaster and can never be understood by a beginner in signals, even if he's very good in differential equations and basic EE concepts.

This book is very easy to understand. It contains fundamentals in systems and signal. It is dealing with the frequency domain approach as well as time domain approach. In addition to that, it offers the linear system approach.

This is an EE topic so why not relate the problems to EE? I understand that EE relies heavily on math, however this book seems to be designed more for a math class with all the proofs. The material gets very caught up in trying to prove every single equation instead of getting to the point and showing some real world applications or examples. In 5 years after taking the course do you think the majority of EE's remember anything about the proofs? I would say not because in general EE's apply general knowledge of transforms to problems not prove every mathematical nuance of them. I think the author should provide more answers to the chapter problems so students know if what they are doing is correct. What good are problems with no answers?? In the real world there are no solutions manual but at least provide something to reinforce the students work.

To date, I have found this book to be a reasonably good examination of signal and system theory. While it is thorough and mathematically rigorous, some readers may find it less user-friendly than other texts. The author communicates primarily through the use of mathematical terms and notation, rather than verbal descriptions or step-by-step explanations. This may or may not be advantageous, depending on a particular reader's preferences and learning style.

The thing I found most irritating about this text was the frequency and severity of typographical errors. These are not always simple spell-checker errors. They are errors in formulas and problems. Apparently, this is mainly the case for first and second printings of the text. You can check the printing by examining the page in the front of the text containing the Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data. Look for the line that reads "Printed in the United States of America" followed by a series of numbers. The number furthest to the right in this series is the printing of your book.

If you find yourself with a first or second printing, there is an accompanying website for the text that lists numerous errata and corrections. It is listed on page xviii and can be found at:

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