[SIGNALS AND](#page-7-0) SYSTEMS

← Back to LINEAR SYSTEMS AND SIGNALS Overview

SIGNALS AND SYSTEMS

In this chapter we shall discuss basic aspects of signals and systems. We shall also introduce fundamental concepts and qualitative explanations of the hows and whys of systems theory, thus building a solid foundation for understanding the quantitative analysis in the remainder of the book. For simplicity, the focus of this chapter is on continuous-time signals and systems. Chapter 3 presents the same ideas for discrete-time signals and systems.

SIGNALS

A signal is a set of data or information. Examples include a telephone or a television signal, monthly sales of a corporation, or daily closing prices of a stock market (e.g., the Dow Jones averages). In all these examples, the signals are functions of the independent variable time. This is not always the case, however. When an electrical charge is distributed over a body, for instance, the signal is the charge density, a function of space rather than time. In this book we deal almost exclusively with signals that are functions of time. The discussion, however, applies equally well to other independent variables.

SYSTEMS

Signals may be processed further by systems, which may modify them or extract additional information from them. For example, an anti-aircraft gun operator may want to know the future location of a hostile moving target that is being tracked by his radar. Knowing the radar signal, he knows the past location and velocity of the target. By properly processing the radar signal (the input), he can approximately estimate the future location of the target. Thus, a system is an entity that processes a set of signals (inputs) to yield another set of signals (outputs). A system may be made up of physical components, as in electrical, mechanical, or hydraulic systems (hardware realization), or it may be an algorithm that computes an output from an input signal (software realization).