American University of Beirut

Department of Electrical and Computer

Engineering

EECE340 Signals and Systems

Lecture 1: Introduction

Fadi Karameh
June 2, 2020
EECE340 © Fadi Karameh
 Welcome!

1. Lectures daily  Study daily: come prepared

2. Ask why.
3. Solve problem sets alone (that’s your gym).
4. Ask how.

EECE340 © Fadi Karameh

 noise, disturbance
(unmeasured, uncertain)

input output
System
(accessible) (accessible)

• How does the input affect the output?

Develop a mathematical description or a model which
can be :
– static (Look up table)
– dynamic (depends on past inputs and outputs)
EECE340 © Fadi Karameh
• Static (Look up table) v R

v  Ri i

 v  i
• Dynamic
R

vi (t )  RC
dv (t )
 v (t ) +
dt vi (t ) +
- v (t )
C
-
(e.g. ordinary differential equations)

EECE340 © Fadi Karameh

 R
i
 +
vi (t ) +
- v (t )
 v  C
-
i v vi (t ) v (t )
System System

EECE340 © Fadi Karameh

• Mechanical systems Car suspension

xi (t ) xo (t ) Car body
k
xi System

m
Contact with
xo road

d 2 xo
m 2   kxo  xi
dt
(from Modern control engineering, Ogata 5th ed)

EECE340 © Fadi Karameh

• Hydraulic Systems

Valve effect

emptying
filling

dh
 kqi (t )
dt
EECE340 © Fadi Karameh
(from Modern control engineering, Ogata 5th ed)
• Neuron models
Dendrites

Soma

Synapses: Axon

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• Pandemic dynamics

Dynamics of various subpopulation

• Susceptible (S)
• Infected (I)
• Recovered (R)
• Deceased (D)

(From: Osemwinyen and Diakhaby 2015).

EECE340 © Fadi Karameh
What you learn here goes well
beyond electrical engineering!

EECE340 © Fadi Karameh

• Once a dynamical system description (model),
is available, we aim to analyze the system:

– How does the system behave (respond) under

typical inputs? (sinusoids, impulses, steps, etc)

– How can we still predict the response to other

general input types?

EECE340 © Fadi Karameh

• Understand the limitations on performance.

– Mechanical (control):
• How smooth can a car ride on rough terrain
• How fast can a vehicle maneuver on sharp corners
– Electrical:
• How much noise can I tolerate during a radio signal
transmission
• How many signals can I transmit data simultaneously?
• How much can I compress a music file or an image
before losing quality?
EECE340 © Fadi Karameh
• Introduce ways to manipulate dynamics
and Improve performance
– Control
• Adjust suspension actively
• Actively control stability (wheel slippage)
• Introduce quarantine regime to limit pandemic
spread
– Signal processing
• Introduce noise resilient coding schemes
• Mutiplex signals to share same channel.
• Introduce efficient compression schemes
EECE340 © Fadi Karameh
 • Control example:
increase speed, reduce oscillations in
response to step commands
Y(𝑠)
X(𝑠) 𝑆𝑦𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑚
+ +
−

Compensator

EECE340 © Fadi Karameh

 Signal Processing
• From Analog to Digital

Transduction A/D conversion Digital treatment

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 Signal transduction
• Sensors transforming recorded physical signals
into electric output
– Microphone: detect sound pressure waves
– ECG electrodes: detect movement of ions
• Require faithful representation of the physical
signal.

EECE340 © Fadi Karameh

 Signal conditioning or
Analog Pre-processing
Circuit designs (electronic) for
• Amplification
• Analog noise/artifact and environmental noise
reduction

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 Environmental noise:
x (t )
X ( )

High frequency line noise

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 Filtering a noisy ECG recording
Frequency content X ( )
x (t )

low frequency High frequency noise

noise
y (t )
Filter H ( )

0.5 Hz 35 Hz

EECE340 © Fadi Karameh

 Amplitude Demodulation
x A (t )
x A (t ) y (t )  xm (t )

xm (t )

Transmitter Receiver

• How do you retrieve your message?

EECE340 © Fadi Karameh

 
x1 A (t )
x1 (t )
n

c1 (t )  cos(1c t )
x A (t )   xi A (t )

i 1
x2 A (t )
x2 (t )

c2 (t )  cos(2 c t )


x3 ( t ) x3 A ( t )
• How do you share the
c3 (t )  cos(3c t ) transmission channel
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From Analog to Digital:
Sampling

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 Sampling

• If and when would we lose information?

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 Digital signal processing
Manipulate using algorithms (Discrete Time systems)

Example: Speech vocoders:

• High quality audio needs a lot of bandwidth

• For speech, can compress signal significantly and

retain only information that ensures intelligibility of
speech

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 Original signal

Spectrogram

reconstructed
Original

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Digital Image processing

(from Gonzales and Woods) EECE340 © Fadi Karameh

(from Gonzales and Woods)
EECE340 © Fadi Karameh
What is the engine behind most of this work?

1. Our ability to manipulate system outputs is

significantly enhanced under the assumptions of
linearity and time invariance

2. Our ability to manipulate signals is significantly

enhanced once decomposed into sinusoids
(Fourier)

3. AND the response of a linear, time invariant system

to sinusoids is very well understood.
EECE340 © Fadi Karameh
 Our ability to manipulate system outputs is
significantly enhanced under the assumptions of
linearity and time invariance x (t ) y (t )
System
x1 (t )  y1 (t )

 linear  ax1 (t )  bx2 (t )  ay1 (t )  by2 (t )
x2 (t )  y 2 (t ) 

x1 (t )  e j1t  y1 (t )  1e j1t 1 : system property

(response at freq 1 )
x2 (t )  e j2t  y 2 (t )  2 e j2t

N N
jk t
 k
a e   ak k e jk t
EECE340 © Fadi Karameh
k 1 k 1
Our ability to manipulate signals is significantly
enhanced once decomposed into sinusoids
(Fourier)

• 𝑥 𝑡 is periodic ( with period =T sec)

 2k
j t 2k
x (t )   C xk e T k 
T 𝐹𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑟 𝑠𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑠
k  

 2k
j t
 y (t )   C xk k e T
k  

EECE340 © Fadi Karameh

Our ability to manipulate signals is significantly
enhanced once decomposed into sinusoids
(Fourier)

• 𝑥 𝑡 is non-periodic

1 jt
x (t ) 
2  X ( )e d  𝐹𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑟 𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑠𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑚



1 jt
 y (t ) 
2  X ( ) ( ) e d


EECE340 © Fadi Karameh

• Linearity, time-invariance, and Fourier apply
for discrete time as well (digital signals and
systems)

EECE340 © Fadi Karameh