Digital Signal Processing: Principles, Algorithms and Applications (3rd Edition)

This book is a great theoretical introduction to DSP. Although its size looks intimidating and there is a lot of math, this book is very good for a beginner because firstly, the size of the book is due to numerous examples as well as clear and detailed explanations for most of the concepts and secondly, it is possible to skip over much of the math if you are so inclined and take away the gist of the section. This is the case in some of the more advanced topics covered which may be suitable for a second reading.

Some of the things I liked in this book are:
- The organization of the material and lucidity of the writing and explanation
- Consistency of notation
- The concepts of frequency in continuous and discrete time signals in Chapter 1
- The long introduction to discrete time systems and the concepts of linear time invariance in Chapter 2
- The explanation of Fourier series and Fourier transforms of continuous time and discrete time signals (periodic and non periodic) in Chapter 4 is the best part of this book
- Frequency domain characteristics of LTI systems in Chapter 4
- The way the DFT was introduced and its relationship with the DTFT in Chapter 5
- Sampling and reconstruction of signals in Chapter 9

Some of the things I did not like in this book are:
- The way the sampling theorem was derived in Chapter 4. In DSP you can derive the same thing in many ways but in many cases one method is more intuitive and simpler than the rest. There is an easier way to derive the sampling theorem
- There are mistakes in some equations. Not a major issue though
- There is no MATLAB or computer exercises or examples anywhere. This is a pity because you can learn so much and get a lot of insights with a few hours of DSP with MATLAB. Also there are some things like filter design which are done only on a computer
- I did not like the treatment of Multirate DSP in Chapter 10
- There is no treatment of 2D processing anywhere

On the whole this is a great theoretical introduction to DSP with a few minor drawbacks. I would still recommend this book over the ones by Oppenheim and Mitra for a beginner. But I would wait for the fourth edition that comes out in Feb. 2006 before buying any DSP book.

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