MATLAB

This is a great book written those people who have lots of experiences with optics and the deep mathematics associated with optics. The best things I like about the book are the Matlab example programs found through out the book.

I was hunting for a single book which covers the area of signals and systems, communication theory, design (transforms related to these topics) using MATLAB (I have a student version 5.0). Every topic is well illustrated with MATLAB programs along with the associated terms, definitions and the mathematical details along with figures for proper visualization. This book an excellent supplement to standard textbooks in these areas.The presentation is crisp and clear. I experienced the "joy of understanding" while using this text with the software. GRAB A COPY AND UNDERSTAND THE WORLD OF TRANSFORMS!

The is a superb book. My only complaint with this text is that it should have been included with Proakis' Digital Communication book in the first place. You will notice that 90% of the graphs and diagrams are straight from that text.

One of the winning ingredients is that all the Matlab code is written to be understood. Where some texts will write all code to be as optimal as possible, this book actually uses loops where Matlab array operations could have been used (which is not recommended in Matlab due to speed). It actually makes the code very readable and enjoyable. Surprisingly a few of the code snippets have left out the plot and stem commands? This is not too much of a hassle if you understand Matlab well, you can just generate that code yourself. Newcomers to Matlab will probably not be impressed. While the Matlab code is very simple and readable, it is still not for the beginner.

NOTE: This book will not teach you communication systems. This book is written like a Schaums text, where they briefly go over the key points, and then start programming them. If you only have this book and no other one to reference, you will be lost.

If you hate the Proakis Digital Communications text (as I do), you will love this one. This book has all the examples and fills in the missing points of that text. I find it interesting that this book has a co-author. I suspect that Salehi must influence the reign of reason in Proakis since this book is written so much clearer than Digital Communications.

In a nutshell, this book is worth its price. Very happy with this purchase.

another reviewer puts "must for begginer", but please notice it's for "a first-year grads" not for under-grads or sheer novices. i'm a plain novice, and i should say this book is not a tutorial. you need basic exposition on this field. i found "Lee and Miller:CDMA Systems Engineering Handbook" is helpful. the handbook is rather verbose and this MATLAB companion makes a good recapitulation of the handbook.

An excellent computer approach to almost all aspects of communications in Electrical Engineering, that clarifies topics which are difficult to approach just by dealing with theory.

On a superficial level, this book looks good: it covers most (if not all) relevant topics, has MATLAB sections, and a range of difficulty on the problems. The issues arise in that the quality of the information is horrid.

The presentation of the information leaves a great deal to be desired: I often think that the authors are intentionally trying to be obtuse by their use of terminology that they don't define and by providing only a bare minimum of effort in their examples which are briefly skimmed over and not up to par with their questions at the end of each section.

It is impossible to teach yourself from this book without a good set of lecture notes to aid you. There is very little information actually present and what is presented tends to be non-comprehensive in quality. The author has a tendancy to skip over the mathematical foundation behind what is going on.

The mathematical foundations are, in fact, not really covered at all.
The matlab sections are of similar quality: skimming over the examples and setting information without explaining the whys and the wherefores.
I found that the questions at the end of the sections were good, but that is about the extent of it.

(I'm not sure what book the previous reviewer was reading when he refers to the "authors" -- Sherrick is the lone author). This book is clear, simple, and filled with worked examples. It succeeds at its modest goal of preparing students for upper-division specialty courses. Very clear explanations and applications of the s-plane and phasors to signal analysis. A real gem if you are interested in learning how to perform simple and practical signal analysis and filter design without getting bogged down in abstract mathematical theory.

My evaluation for this book, 2 stars, is based on my specific needs and wants that were the motivation for my purchasing this book, and resulted in disappointment.

I'm a first-semester graduate student in electrical engineering, and wanted to self-learn a lot of MATLAB and its uses with DSP, so that I could get a head's start in gaining the background I would later need for my research in DSP. I knew this book was a collection of exercises in which you create MATLAB programs (.m files) to solve DSP problems and explore various DSP topics. However, I also expected the book to give full solutions to the problems, working through the MATLAB scripts for you so that you could learn the DSP applications of MATLAB through practice.

Unfortunately, I was wrong... The book is divided into a series of projects, and with each project there is a brief explanation of the related theory, and then several problems which tell you to program MATLAB to do so and so, sometimes along with a few hints.... and NO SOLUTIONS ARE GIVEN. In fact, it's basically just a collection of problems. I think it's meant more for TEACHERS... to assign the problems in the book as homework for students in their DSP classes. In that respect, it is natural that there are no solutions included in the book.

In summary, this is not a book you want to buy if you're looking for something you can use to STUDY and LEARN how to apply MATLAB to DSP. It is essentially just a list of DSP problems which require you to use MATLAB. I'm sure the problems themselves are beautifully-crafted problems that would give you lots of insight and grasp of concepts once you have given lots of effort into them and then saw the solutions.... As just a book of problems, I'm sure it would be a top-quality book worthy of 5 stars (after all, look at its authors). But if nobody gives you the solutions, you can't learn a great deal from just the problems and briefly-explained theory.

Just make sure you know what this book is about and whether it really is what you're looking for before you purchase it. I'm planning on returning mine.

This book is, as the title says, a collection of DSP exercises. What little mention there is of theory, is basically mere keywords and hints to more theoretical textbooks. The student is also expected to have a working knowledge of MATLAB. The focus of the book is getting hands-on experience with DSP, using MATLAB as a very convenient tool to this end. The authors mention that the intended audience is senior undergraduates and first-year graduate students. I'm not sure if I understand the American educational system, but I think that means the audience of this book is expected to have at least two semesters of basic DSP training.

The book is organized in 12 chapters. The chapters are divided into sections that treat more detailed issues. The chapter and section headings are:

1 Basic Signals and Systems
- Signals
- Difference Equations
- Fourier Transform: DTFT
- Group Delay
- Basic Sampling Theory
- Zero-Phase IIR Filtering

2 Discrete Fourier Transform
- DFT Properties
- DFT as a Matrix
- Convolution: Circular and Block
- Related Transforms

3 Spectrum Analysis
- Spectral Windows
- Sliding-Window DFT
- Narrowband Signals

4 Multirate Processing
- Bandlimited Interpolation
- Zoom Transform
- Rate Changing

5 Systems and Structures
- Systems and Structures

6 Stochastic Signals
- Stochastic Signals
- FFT Spectrum Estimation
- Modern Spectrum Estimation

7 Wordlength Effects
- Wordlength Effects

8 Discrete-Time Filter Design
- Discrete Design of FIR Filters
- Least-Squares Design of FIR Filters
- Chebychev Design of FIR Filters
- Design of IIR Filters

9 DFT and FFT Algorithms
- Direct Calculation of the DFT
- The Cooley-Tukey FFT
- Prime Factor FFTs
- General-Length FFTs

10 Applications
- Radar Simulation
- Introduction to Speech Processing
- Speech Modeling
- Speech Quantization

11 Signal Modeling
- Linear Prediction
- Linear Prediction of Speech
- Exponential Modeling
- Signal Estimation
- Least-Squares Inversion

12 Appendix A: Software and Programming Notes

Each section is divided into a number of projects which, in turn, are divided into a number of exercises.

To get an impression of the level these exercises hold, consider the section "Least-Squares Design of FIR Filters" in chapter 8. The section is divided in the projects

Project 1: FIR Filter Design by Least Integral Squared Error
Approximation
Project 2: Design of High-Pass, Band-Pass and Band-Reject
Least-Squared-Error FIR Filters
Project 3: FIR Filter Design Using Window Functions

The two first exercises of project 3 are (p 269):

=====================================================
Exercise 3.1: Design a Low-Pass Filter Using Windows

Design a length-23 linear-phase FIR low-pass filter
with a band edge of w0 = 0.3pi using the following
windows:

a Rectangular
b Triangular or Bartlett
c Hanning
d Hamming
e Blackman

Plot the impulse response, amplitude response and
zero locations of the four(sic!) filters. Compare the
charactersitics of the amplitude response of the five
filters. Do this in terms of the squared error, the
Chebychev error and the transition bandwidth. Compare
them to an optimal Chebychev filter designed with a
transition band and the least-squared-error filter
designed with a spline transition function. How do
you choose a transition bandwidth for a meaningful
comparision?

==================================================
Exercise 3.2: Design a Band-Pass Filter Using Windows

Take the band-pass filter designed in exercise 2.5
and apply the five windows. Analyze the amplitude
response.

====================================================

Hardly newbie material, in my opinion. The student really needs to know the material (Ex. 3.1) and has to be able to generate useful answers from a very generic job assignment (Ex. 3.2).

These are exactly the reasons why I find this type of exercises attractive (and perhaps why others may be repelled by them). The focus is consistently on what the authors call "learning by discovery" (which probably has little to do with the TV channel...): The student has to find the theory, implement and test most functions himself and has to process synthetic and real data (data and some auxillary functions are available via the www from MathWorks), and also evaluate the results of his efforts. This is exactly the kind of hands-on experience most DSP courses (and perhaps even DSP training programs) lack these days, and what makes this book so very useful.

Some conclusions based on a couple of hours browsing:

- This is NOT a textbook for learning neither DSP
nor MATLAB.
- The reader is expected to have working knowledge
of MATLAB and a firm theoretical basis in DSP.
- This book provides some badly needed hands-on
traning programs.
- The book consistently aims for building insight
and intuition.
- The book is perhaps too tuned towards use in a
class with an instructor.

I have the previous edition of the book (Using Matlab 4) and this review is on that version... I find this book to be an excellent APPLICATIONS book. It is not intended to be a Matlab Primer; you are supposed to know Matlab programming already. It is also not intended to be a DSP Primer. This book takes the basic DSP knowledge you already have and allows you to expand on it by applying it to a variety of real problems, like radar ranging or speech processing or filtering. It also deepens your knowledge by giving you drill problems that go deep into the workings of the DFT and other basic DSP tools. I had the good luck of taking a couple of DSP courses with McClellan and Schafer when they were writing this book and they used to hand problems from the book as special homework after they had taught the underlying material. Doing these exercises after you know the basics is an excellent way to cement that knowlege and become more proficient both in matlab and in problem solving.

Computer-Based Exercises for Signal Processing Using Matlab

With projects which start with basic signal processing and progressively build on to more advanced topics, like radar and speech modeling, this book provides in depth understanding and insight into many areas of DSP which cannot be obtained from textbook based learning alone. This book will prove to be an indispensable aide to DSP students as well as practitioners who implement DSP algorithms.