Old ways are best

Information transmission has come home - returning to the digital technique from which it originated in 1837 with telegraphy. Analogue transmission was introduced in 1876 with the invention of the telephone and it ruled the information transmission landscape for 100 years. Although digital techniques have huge advantages over analogue methods, an early widespread adoption of digital transmissions was hindered by the absence of affordable circuits to implement the signal processing required.

However, advances in semiconductor technology have created inexpensive microprocessor chips that can perform complex digital signal processing (DSP) functions. These have paved the way for the digital revolution, with a cost-effective digitalisation of telecommunications networks and the entertainment industry to name but a few application areas of DSP.

This textbook covers, clearly and concisely, the core material of a DSP course, including the analysis of signals in time and transform domains, linear time-invariant systems, structure and design of digital filters, analogue/digital signal conversions and multirate systems and DSP applications. So it is suitable as the main text for an undergraduate DSP course or for a short course for practising engineers.

Other features include a thoughtful page presentation, an extensive list of references and a large number of problems. Anyone who has worked through the book should get a good understanding of efficient digital filter design methods and a grounding in the tools for developing signal processing systems.

But the text would have benefited from more application-oriented illustrations and worked examples; and a better integration of Matlab, which is now commonplace in many universities as the computational platform for DSP training.

The inclusion of Matlab by way of an abridged function reference at chapter endings is not very useful to readers who have access to the complete function reference from computing software supplier MathWorks.

Ifiok Otung is principal lecturer in communication systems, University of Glamorgan.