Book Review: Radar Systems

chapter, although, in some cases the reader is given little help in finding particular reference material. There are examples in the text such as 'it may be shown l' where reference I is a complete book with no indication of chapter or page numbers. Engineers tend to divide into two groups. One of these consists of individuals who are able to think in purely mathematical terms while the other consists of those who, while they understand and can use the appropriate mathematical tools, use images when forming a conceptual understanding of a problem. The former group will find this book satisfactory but the latter may have some difficulty in reading it. The mathematics of the subject material is treated thoroughly and a wide range of applications and examples is considered. What is missing for me, however, is the discussion which leads image-thinkers to a good conceptual understanding of the material. The authors have presented the topics in much the same way that one would in the course of a lecture series. Techniques are used such as leaving derivations to be completed by the student and giving, in the early stages of the presentation, a flavour of things to come in order to whet the student's appetite and maintain interest. It is significant that I have used the word student in the previous sentence rather than reader. I found that the use of these techniques made the text less easy to read. I suspect that anyone studying the text on their own without assistance to guide them through the tutorial questions or to provide simple explanations when advanced topics are discussed at an early stage might be in some difficulty. The section on optimal design of FIR filters is surprisingly brief with a mention, but virtually no discussion, of techniques such as the Remez exchange algorithm (which also has no entry in the index). It could be argued that designers do not need a detailed knowledge of such algorithms since they will normally simply be required to feed appropriate data into existing computer programs. However, it is another case of the reader being left with little conceptual understanding of the technique. Other examples of topics which would have benefited from further discussion include the effectsof finite length samples, the effectsof windowing (both in the design of FIR filters and the OFT spectrum) and the interpretation of the OFT spectrum. It is not that such topics are omitted from the text, but rather that a reader coming to the material for the first time would find it difficult to get a feel for the physical significance of these points. Although I have made some critical comments, most of them do not apply if this book is considered as a text to accompany a lecture series since, in this case, the text would be supplemented by explanation from the lecturer. As a text, this book represents good value for money especially in the paperback edition. Many of the texts on this subject are expensive and this one covers a wealth of material, includes copious tutorial examples and has available a comprehensive instructor's manual. This manual almost merits a separate review since it contains about 800 A4 sides (page numbers are not given). It includes not only the solutions to the tutorial questions in the main text with a discussion of significant points but also a chapter-by-chapter lecturer's guide and supplemental material on key points. A useful feature of the manual is that it includes permission to reproduce the contents for educational purposes. The authors state that they intend to publish, in disk form, listings of all the computer programs used in the text and instructor's manual but my copy did not contain such a disk. Except for the last few chapters, the manual is photo-typeset from originals produced on a dot-matrix printer and, as a result, superscripts and subscripts are not always easily read. However, at £32, the manual represents good value for money. The text and associated instructor's manual would form a valuable aid to a teacher presenting a lecture series on digital signal processing. J. F. AITKEN, Head ofElectrical and Electronic Engineering. Hatfield Polytechnic