Customer Reviews

Wavelets and Subband Coding (Prentice Hall Signal Processing Series)

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

 

 

There are few books that sucessfully cover the interface of diverse fields, and yet this lovely book represents a subject that thrives on the interconnections. It is a great textbook, and it works well for selfstudy. The two subjects wavelets and subband filtering [from signal processing] are quite different, and have distinct and independent lives, they have different aims, and different histories. And yet, it is the happy marriage of the two that enriches the the union to an extraordinary degree. Multiresolutions are the bread and butter of wavelet algorithms, and they thrive on methods from signal processing, the quadrature-mirror filter construction, for example. One reason some books in the subject miss the target is that most authors know one of the subjects well, but not the others. Diverse subjects have quite different languages, and different terminology. The present authors are indeed on target, and they know it all. They come from engineering, but they know all the math;--the connections are made. And they strike a balance: Engineers can find what they want for the practical problems, and the mathematicians will not be disappointed. Programmers can pick up what is needed in their world. The book has been tested in courses, including mine. If you pick it for a course, the authors have material on their web pages that serves as a wonderful supplement. Lovely!

Martin Vetterli is the foremost researcher in the area of wavelets in signal processing, and one of the best presenters whom I've met. That may be sufficient to convince some people to buy this book, but may discourage others from buying this book.

One thing to keep in mind while reading this book is the following: The faithful shall be rewarded. If you're uninitiated, this book can be very intimidating, and Martin goes through the first parts (considered to be review) a little bit hurriedly, all the way through the end of Chapter 3.

But once you get into Chapter 4, you will be treated with an excellent coverage of why wavelets are so great, and the state-of-the-art of its research and application. This is where the two authors truly work their magic in their writing.

Even as you try to get past Chapter 3, there are many gems to be discovered, for example the proof of the ambiguity function in time-frequency analysis.

It is an excelent book for anyone interested in wavelets from a Discrete Time Signal Processing point of view.
It has a good introduction and review of basic topics, concepts and definitions necessary to grab the basis of DSP in the first chapters. Therefor, it provides a good framework to study wavelets without having studied DSP.
However, it is better if you have studied DSP prior to reading this book. You will enjoy it much more!

Graduate-level signal-processing math, but good explanations of image FFTs and MPEG video compression, etc.

The authors look hurried to catch the wave of wavelets and compiled hot topics of the publication date without almost any logical order. Lots of material taken from others' papers without generosity in the references. The book is missing to tell readers its purpose! Is it a mathematical treatment of wavelet transforms or an engineering book? I could not answer this question as a doctoral student. It's very much like a Ph.D. dissertation of the second author. Frankly, I was disappointed with the quality of the book from a known researcher like Prof. Vetterli.

One get's the feeling that this is the outline for the definitive book on wavelets. But the authors can't make up there minds whether the book should be mostly theoretical or merely useful. A great deal of why and what - and not too much how to. Hopefully there will be another, more insightful edition.