Linear Systems and Signals (The Oxford Series in Electrical and Computer Engineering)

The second half, signal analysis, is also quite good, but a bit harder to understand and follow than the first half. It is still far better than just about every other book out there... except for Peter Kraniauskas' book, "Transforms in Signals and Systems," which is the best choice for understanding signal analysis. I highly recommend getting both Lathi's book and Peter's book if you can afford it.

If you can only afford one book, you are a first time student in systems and signals, or you are interested mainly in circuits, filters, transfer functions, frequency and phase responses and so forth, go with Lathi's book.

If you can only afford one book, and you are interested in DSP with Fourier analysis, and discrete Fourier analysis, as well as spectrum analysis in general, go with Peter Kraniauskas' book.

In Summary:
If you are in a class called "Systems and Circuits" or something like that, get Lathi's book.

If you are in a class called "Discrete Time Signals and Systems" or "Frequency Analysis", go with Peter's book.


This is truly an excellent book.   November 26, 1999
Sadhak
9 out of 9 found this review helpful

"This is truly an excellent book...Lathi's writing is of high caliber...I believe the strongest point of the book is prof Lathi's ability to describe very difficult material in a very clear and simple way."


An excellent textbook   July 14, 2004
James Fett (Georgetown, TX United States)
14 out of 16 found this review helpful

Lathi's book is an excellent, easy-to-read and easy-to-understand text on systems and signals. He spends a lot of time explaining in-depth examples, doing so without assuming the student has insight he or she probably does not-a common problem in other textbooks. Lathi goes out of his way to explain every nuance, greatly helping the learning processs

Unlike most other textbooks, this one is easy to read, without a glut of technical jargon, or pages and pages of mathematical formulae without text explaining where the author is heading. Lathi also includes a very comprehensive background section, polishing and reviewing the mathematical techniques necessary for solving the problems. It is handy to have this in one book, rather than require trigonometry, matrix algebra, and differential equations books at the standby for review.

One complaint is that this book does not have solutions to some of the homework problems, helping with additional study. This isn't quite the problem it is in other books since the examples are very thorough and insightful.

Simply put, not only is this probably the best textbook on systems and signals, it is one of the best textbooks I have ever used.


This book stands head and shoulders above the rest.   November 26, 1999
Sadhak
7 out of 7 found this review helpful

"This book stands head and shoulders above the rest of the books in the field... A pedagogically sound approach... I like the author's style of writing. All the chapters are uniformly well written and reflect the author's experience in teaching the subject to students with varying degrees of interest and abilities. He recognizes the common source of student difficulty and addresses each one."


The Best College Text book for Linear Systems and Signals   October 10, 2003
7 out of 7 found this review helpful

In 1996, I bought this book for a class on Linear Systems.
After reading the first three chapters of this book,
I quickly became very impressed with Author's Style.

Lathi's book is well writen and it is very easy to understand.
When I took my communication class, I decided to buy Lathi's
Modern Digital Communication book even though we were assigned
a different class book. Lathi's books are fun to read and learn.

I use this book every day as a Reference for my Digital Signal Processing projects.