Essentials of Digital Signal Processing

Since its emergence as a field of importance in the 1970s, digital signal processing (DSP) has grown in exponential lockstep with advances in digital hardware. Today's digital age requires that under-graduate students master material that was, until recently, taught primarily at the graduate level. Many DSP textbooks remain rooted in this graduate-level foundation and cover an exhaustive (and exhausting!) number of topics. This book provides an alternative. Rather than cover the broadest range of topics possible, we instead emphasize a narrower set of core digital signal processing concepts. Rather than rely solely on mathematics, derivations, and proofs, we instead balance necessary mathematics with a physical appreciation of subjects through heuristic reasoning, careful examples, metaphors, analogies, and creative explanations. Throughout, our underlying goal is to make digital signal processing as accessible as possible and to foster an intuitive understanding of the material.

Practical DSP requires hybrid systems that include both discrete-time and continuous-time components. Thus, it is somewhat curious that most DSP textbooks focus almost exclusively on discrete-time signals and systems. This book takes a more holistic approach and begins with a review of continuous-time signals and systems, frequency response, and filtering. This material, while likely familiar to most readers, sets the stage for sampling and reconstruction, digital filtering, and other aspects of complete digital signal processing systems. The synergistic combination of continuous-time and discrete-time perspectives leads to a deeper and more complete understanding of digital signal processing than is possible with a purely discrete-time viewpoint. A strong foundation of continuous-time concepts naturally leads to a stronger understanding of discrete-time concepts.