It was a great help for me as an ECE student to learn that this course was developed in 1987 by the MIT

Center for Advanced Engineering Studies. It was designed as a distance-education course for engineers and
scientists in the workplace.

I now understand that Signals and Systems is an introduction to analog and digital signal processing, a topic
that forms an integral part of engineering systems in many diverse areas, including seismic data processing,
communications, speech processing, image processing, defense electronics, consumer electronics, and consumer
products.

Knowing that the course presents and integrates the basic concepts for both continuous-time and discrete-time
signals and systems. Signal and system representations are developed for both time and frequency domains. These
representations are related through the Fourier transform and its generalizations, which are explored in detail.
Filtering and filter design, modulation, and sampling for both analog and digital systems, as well as exposition and
demonstration of the basic concepts of feedback systems for both analog and digital systems, are discussed and
illustrated, Prof. Alan V. Oppenheim (2015).

Time-domain illustration of upsampling from Lec #19.

(Image courtesy of Professor Alan Oppenheim)

In Linear time-invariant systems the context of linearity, time invariance, and finite dimensionality
were introduced. It was shown that a given family of time series may be represented by a system of (AR)
equations: Riw(t + l) + Rl 1w(t + l 1) + + R0w(t) = 0, or, equivalently, by a finite dimensional linear time
invariant system: x(t + 1) = Ax(t) + Bu(t); y(t) = Cx(t) + Du(t); w = (u, y), if and only if this family is linear,
shift invariant and complete (or, as is equivalent, closed in the topology of pointwise convergence). This
yields a very high level and elegant set of axioms which characterize these familiar objects. It was
emphasized, however, that no a priori choice is made as to which components of w are inputs and which
are outputs. Such a separation always exists in any specific linear time invariant model. Starting from
these definitions, the structural indices of such systems were introduced in this subject and it is shown
how an (AR) representation of a system having a given behaviour could be constructed, Elsevier
(copyright 2015).

In array design, the geometric properties of arrays, which are handled by

physical optics, Fourier and Fresnel transforms, and convolution theory, and the
relation of array properties to properties of systems within which the array serves as
the transducer. Introductory chapters are provided on basic aperture and array
theory, including the calculation of the radiation pattern, beam dimensions,
sidelobes and aperture taper, and periodic array synthesis. Aperiodic arrays are
briefly considered, while chief attention is given to theory of the random array,
covering average sidelobe level, average array factor, average power pattern,
variance, PDF of sidelobe amplitude, peak sidelobe estimator, extensions to peak
sidelobe theory for the random array, and angular accuracy and resolution. Further
chapters are included on adaptive beamforming, and adaptive nulling, in which
techniques for phase synchronization are examined and the concepts of the nulling
tree, the least mean square algorithm, and polarization nulling are studied. Final
chapters are devoted to tolerance theory and hard limiting in phased arrays,
Steinberg B.D. (1976,copyright 2015)
In Fourier Analysis I learned much of understanding the following:
1. The contrast thresholds of a variety of grating patterns have been measured over a wide range of spatial
frequencies.
2. Contrast thresholds for the detection of gratings whose luminance profiles are sine, square, rectangular or sawtooth waves can be simply related using Fourier theory.

3. Over a wide range of spatial frequencies the contrast threshold of a grating is determined only by the amplitude of
the fundamental Fourier component of its wave form.
4. Gratings of complex wave form cannot be distinguished from sine-wave gratings until their contrast has been
raised to a level at which the higher harmonic components reach their independent threshold.
5. These findings can be explained by the existence within the nervous system of linearly operating independent
mechanisms selectively sensitive to limited ranges of spatial frequencies.
The Journal of Physiology(Aug 1,1968, copyright 2015)

In implementing the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method on materials which are dispersive
or nonlinear, I have come to understand that the relationship between the flux density and the electric
field can be the most complicated part of the problem. Because the FDTD method is a sampled timedomain method, this relationship can be can be looked upon as a digital filtering problem. The Z transform
is typically used in digital filtering and signal processing problems. The paper illustrates the use of the Z
transform in implementing the FDTD method where complicated dispersive or nonlinear materials are
involved, Antennas and Propagation (2002).
Discrete Fourier transforms (DFTs) are extremely useful because they reveal periodicities in input data as well
as the relative strengths of any periodic components. There are however a few subtleties in the interpretation of
discrete Fourier transforms. In general, the discrete Fourier transform of a real sequence of numbers will be a
sequence of complex numbers of the same length. In particular, if

are real, then

and

are related by

(5)
for
, 1, ...,
, where denotes the complex conjugate. This means that the component
real data, Weisstein, Eric W (2015).

is always real for

The fast Fourier transform (FFT) is a discrete Fourier transform algorithm which reduces the number of
computations needed for

points from

to

, wherelg is the base-2 logarithm Weistein, Eric W (2015).

I also learned that Sampling Theorem considers the classical sampling theorem in
multiresolution spaces with scaling functions as interpolants. As discussed by Xia and
Zhang (1993), for an orthogonal scaling function to support such a sampling theorem, the
scaling function must be cardinal (interpolating). They also showed that the only orthogonal
scaling function that is both cardinal and of compact support is the Haar function, which is
not continuous. This paper addresses the same question, but in the multiwavelet context,
where the situation is different. This lesson presents the construction of compactly
supported orthogonal multiscaling functions that are continuously differentiable and
cardinal. The scaling functions thereby support a Shannon-like sampling theorem. Such
wavelet bases are appealing because the initialization of the discrete wavelet transform
(prefiltering) is the identity operator,Signal Processing, IEEE Transactions
on (Volume:47 , Issue: 6, 2002).

Gabor filters have been successfully applied to a broad range of image processing tasks. This topic considers
the design of a single filter to segment a two-texture image. A new efficient algorithm for Gabor-filter design is
presented, along with methods for estimating filter output statistics. The algorithm draws upon previous results that
showed that the output of a Gabor-filtered texture is modeled well by a Rician distribution. A measure of the total
output power is used to select the center frequency of the filter and is used to estimate the Rician statistics of the
Gabor-filtered image. The method is further generalized to include the statistics of postfiltered outputs that are
generated by a Gaussian filtering operation following the Gabor filter. The new method typically requires an order of
magnitude less computation to design a filter than a previously proposed method. Experimental results demonstrate
the efficacy of the method, Elsevier (copyright 2015).