Rating: 
Summary: Good startup step to commiuncation field
Review: Good startup step to commiuncation field for all people that want get into the new technology -to built your fundmental understanding of sigal & system.
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Summary: Excellent introduction to the topic
Review: Having had this book for 2 semesters in a Signals and Systems course, I can say that it has done its job in presenting an in-depth and clear introduction to the topic. It is well-written, structured, comprehensive and has lots of challenging (and not so) exercises and examples.A few comments on the latter: it seemed to me that the first 20 basic exercises at the end of each chapter were very basic, of the type "plug-in the formula from the table on the previous page", while the subsequent problems, especially the advanced ones, are way above the level of the former. Working out through those was meticulous, hard and very lengthy as compared to the basic stuff (the solutions provided by our instructor were of the order 1-2 typed pages per problem). Providing answers or at least general strategies would have been tremendously helpful. I am aware that there is a solutions manual, however the textbook itself is expensive enough. The information was presented clearly, but I liked our professor's introduction to convolution more that the book's coverage. The sampling chapter was, at least to me and some of my fellows, a bit confusing and we had to, again, rely more on class notes. Overall this is a good book, albeit very-very expensive (I was lucky enough to get a cheap Indian reprint).
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Summary: I love it so much
Review: I am a chinese undergraduate student in electronics engneering,
instand of giving out many hard to understand mathematical equations.it give you very basic understanding of signals & systems.it focused on why we should use this method,why we should think this way...instead of just teach you how to solve the n order differential equations,how to used complex and don't -know-why way to solve mathematical problems.
If you guys are lucky enough to gain the chinese text book we are using now on signals and systems.You will find it a piece of mathematics junk,in compare with this one.
Rating: 
Summary: hard to read and bad examples
Review: I am currently using this book at the University of Pittsburgh and found it very difficult to follow. I feel that the author spends more time trying to show his english and grammer skills rather than his knowledge of systems and signals. The examples that are given, don't supply enough information on how to get from point A to point B.
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Summary: Many other reviews not fully objective???
Review: I have just used this text in teaching a second-year Signals and Systems course. Yes -- the students have struggled with the course, and several of them have grumbled about the book. However, none of the adverse comments I've received about the book either from my students or other reviewers here seem to be valid. The possible exception is the lack of more worked examples or at least answers to end of chapter problems. The book is an excellent basic introduction to the subject. It takes what can be a very difficult subject for students and provides a relatively clear path through the material. It doesn't assume very much mathematical background in the sense that there are plenty of very elementary problems in chapter one to remind you of the basics that you need for the rest of the book. Obviously if students have trouble with these problems they need to consider additional study to fill in some of the gaps in their knowledge on the mathematics side. The worked examples in the chapters are excellent, although sometimes you have to ask yourself what you are supposed to be learning from each example or end of chapter problem. The first 20 problems at the end of each chapter really cover the chapter material, and subsequent problems delve into the material in a little more depth or in relation to more real-world problems. If you understand the chapter you should have no great difficulty in doing the first 20 problems in each chapter, and the answers are provided to help you make sure you aren't missing the point. I found some of the other problems a little less clear, and certainly the students had difficulties here. I provided well over a hundred pages of written solutions for my students to try to overcome this deficiency. There is a solutions manual, but I don't recommend it all that highly. I found quite a lot of basic mistakes in the solutions manual. Several problems seemed to be done the "wrong way" compared to what I think the intention of the problem is. Also, some of the solutions in the solutions manual don't give enough guidance to students (at least not to the students I had in my course, and most likely not to many others judging by sorts of comments I've read in reviews here). On the other hand, I've probably made similar sorts of mistakes with the solutions I've provided, so I guess I can understand why the solutions manual has these deficiencies. A few of the end of chapter problems (very, very few) didn't seem to have much point. Some seemed to involve a lot of work, for not much instructive gain. However, the large majority of problems are excellent and highly instructive. As with all books there are possibly things which could be improved, but overall this book is excellent in terms of being a good basic introductory text for a Signals and Systems course. Such a course is something that many students are going to find difficult, but the book isn't to blame if that's the case.
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Summary: It's an excellent text book if you have patience ...
Review: I have used this book when I was in college and found it hard to understand, at first. Later on I started using it as a reference and begun to appreciate it. The trick was to read it very patiently (extremely), line by line. No short cuts. If one wants to highlight the most important part of any section of this book, that person will end up highlighting the entire book. It is that dense in information. I have consulted this book several times as a reference since then. I have seen some other work of Oppenheim's and I believe he is one of the most talented person in this field and knows exactly how to present this subject in the most graceful way. As far as the end of chapter questions are concerned, I should agree to the fact that they are very hard. One needs to be extremely knowledgeable to attack some of the problems. If you are novice to Signal Processing, chances are you will not even understand the solution let alone the question. Bottom line: I believe this book can be used by any body who has some basic understanding of mathematics. You do not have to be an expert at all.
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Summary: Convoluted Convolution
Review: I remember reading this book for one of my courses back in college. It's pretty decent but, the section explaining convolution is atrocious. It's only 3-4 pages long and there are only two-in the entire book- examples given. The first, which is trivial, is worked out in detail. The second more realistic example is not. The reverse would have been more a more illuminating situation. This text does a very good job on the other topics covered. Be warned however that the constant shifting between discrete and continuous signals in the book probably will not be how those subjects are taught in a course. Consider using "Circuits, Signals, and Systems" as a supplement.
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Summary: One of the worst TEXTbooks.
Review: I spent more time trying to understand the author's prose than I did trying to solve the problems. There are many good exercises in the book, but the author's ability to explain principles were far from being succinct and unambiguous. The author often digressed, and there were even times when the text became misleading. Causality was not correctly defined and convolution was definetly convoluted. This book serves only 2 purposes. 1)A nice source of practice problems. 2)A hideous source of punishment for those students learning about signals for their first time. I would not recommend this book until the author adds 3 times more mathematics and reduces his prose to 1/3.
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Summary: Too easy
Review: I use this textbook for ECE310 Linear Systems and Communications for 3rd year Computer Engineering @ University of Toronto. I found it quite nice, however for our learning purposes way too trivial... I don't know how it is for the rest of the world, but for us here in Toronto, it made this course one of our "bird" courses. Way too easy if you ask me, however considering i got 100% in that course, i can't complain...
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Summary: This was pretty useful
Review: I used several books while studying this subject.
The oppenheim wilsky (O/W) is a very good at explaining the basic ideas of signal processing, classification et al. I found the math part of it (chps 3- 6 : concerning various fourier representations) a tad inadequate.
I also liked the Haykin's (Signals and Systems by Simon Haykin and Barry Van Veen) approach to fourier,laplace representations better organized. (all four transforms are deal with simultaneously.. this helps in retaining clarity)
on the whole, the book is useful as long as you can supplement the math in it with a more problem oriented book like the schuam series book (By Hsu).
There is a solutions manual available for end of chapter problems. But working it out on your own or in a study group is far more effective.
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