Customer Reviews

Linear Systems and Signals (The Oxford Series in Electrical and Computer Engineering)

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

The author is really solid. He writes his text carefully. You won't find a higher quality, more coherent book on the subject when it comes to systems. The best part is the fist half, the first 6 chapters on system analysis.

The second half, signal analysis, is also quite good, but a bit harder to understand and follow than the first half. It is still far better than just about every other book out there... except for Peter Kraniauskas' book, "Transforms in Signals and Systems," which is the best choice for understanding signal analysis. I highly recommend getting both Lathi's book and Peter's book if you can afford it.

If you can only afford one book, you are a first time student in systems and signals, or you are interested mainly in circuits, filters, transfer functions, frequency and phase responses and so forth, go with Lathi's book.

If you can only afford one book, and you are interested in DSP with Fourier analysis, and discrete Fourier analysis, as well as spectrum analysis in general, go with Peter Kraniauskas' book.

In Summary:
If you are in a class called "Systems and Circuits" or something like that, get Lathi's book.

If you are in a class called "Discrete Time Signals and Systems" or "Frequency Analysis", go with Peter's book.

"This is truly an excellent book...Lathi's writing is of high caliber...I believe the strongest point of the book is prof Lathi's ability to describe very difficult material in a very clear and simple way."

In 1996, I bought this book for a class on Linear Systems.
After reading the first three chapters of this book,
I quickly became very impressed with Author's Style.

Lathi's book is well writen and it is very easy to understand.
When I took my communication class, I decided to buy Lathi's
Modern Digital Communication book even though we were assigned
a different class book. Lathi's books are fun to read and learn.

I use this book every day as a Reference for my Digital Signal Processing projects.

"It is the best text I have seen so far... I was very impressed with the book... It is written very well and stands unique among other texts in its detailed examples and consistent intuitive discussions of the concepts and mathematical tools introduced throughout."

"This book stands head and shoulders above the rest of the books in the field... A pedagogically sound approach... I like the author's style of writing. All the chapters are uniformly well written and reflect the author's experience in teaching the subject to students with varying degrees of interest and abilities. He recognizes the common source of student difficulty and addresses each one."

Lathi's book is an excellent, easy-to-read and easy-to-understand text on systems and signals. He spends a lot of time explaining in-depth examples, doing so without assuming the student has insight he or she probably does not-a common problem in other textbooks. Lathi goes out of his way to explain every nuance, greatly helping the learning processs

Unlike most other textbooks, this one is easy to read, without a glut of technical jargon, or pages and pages of mathematical formulae without text explaining where the author is heading. Lathi also includes a very comprehensive background section, polishing and reviewing the mathematical techniques necessary for solving the problems. It is handy to have this in one book, rather than require trigonometry, matrix algebra, and differential equations books at the standby for review.

One complaint is that this book does not have solutions to some of the homework problems, helping with additional study. This isn't quite the problem it is in other books since the examples are very thorough and insightful.

Simply put, not only is this probably the best textbook on systems and signals, it is one of the best textbooks I have ever used.

Having studied this subject some years ago, the associate text left massive gaps between what is purely mathematical and what is truly practical for those whose future includes evolving from an electrical engineering student to a practicing engineer. This book, however rudimentary, is written with pedagogy, with no intent to be sesquipedalian in a mathematical context, which i find is often done to impress colleagues in the teaching of such subjects. Evolution, a word this author understands. I would have wished the author of my college text would look it up.

"This is a very fine contribution. Lathi's book nearly teaches itself, and I look forward to using it again. What sets this book apart is Lathi's obvious experience with teaching of this material, and the comfortable, nonthreatening style of presentation, supported by intuitive insight which is very helpful to the student. Lathi knows the usual pitfalls and difficult concepts, and anticipates the typical questions. All in all, a very good job."

This is truely an excellent book on linear signals and systems. It explains some background knowledge that you are supposed to have in more details than Oppenheim. For instance, it explains the difference between zero state response and zero input response in a great detail. But Oppenheim has a few better chapters on somewhat more advanced topics, for instance on sampling. So, get both.

The topics covered in signals and system are so critical and interesting. I wish I had taken such a course before. I would recommend that all engineering students take this course. This course is somewhat difficult among undergrad level courses. But there are excellent resources to help you. The two books mentioned are excellent. UC Berkely offers a free video course on this. MIT has free course material on its web site also. The one by UC Berkely is quite easy, and the one by MIT is more challenging. Do the homework offered by MIT, and they are interesting and rewarding. The one by MIT follows Oppenheim's book precisely, another benefit for self-learners.

This book has it all: logic, concepts, math, many examples, practical applications, even little historical notes and matlab sections. It's just a very accurate, neat, and well organized book. The guy actually exlains "why". He explains not only how to DO Laplace, Fourier, etc but how to UDERSTAND it. And he is very accurate with what and how he is saying. I bought this book for my undergrad systems & signals class for extra reading and thanks to this book it wasn't one of those 'mechanically' learned classes but math actually acquired meaning.