ECE3510: Linear Systems Theory
Taught: Aut. 2002, Aut. 2001, Aut. 1999, Aut. 1998.

 Summary

To date, I have taught ECE3510 four times. The lectures were originally derived from notes used by Drs. Wang and Wickert. I made significant changes to the notes after the first year:
At the junior level, I found that the students were not familiar (enough) with the complex exponential signal, and with how to time-shift and time-scale signals. I added a section of notes on the complex-exponential (pp. 1–9 to 1–10) and on “function relatives” (pp. 1–14 to 1–16).
The juniors also had difficulty interpreting mathematical definitions in terms of procedures that they could use. In order to help them, I created a series of “recipes” to help them interpret and apply the math. In particular, refer to pages 2–4 (test for time invariance); 2–7 (test for causality); 2–8 (test for linearity) and 2–12 (application of convolution integral).
The Fourier series was not well liked, nor was it well understood. I created a summary table (page 3–25) to help the student distinguish between the three flavors of Fourier series studied, and to be able to easily convert between them.
The Laplace transform is key to system theory, but is not intuitive. I added a section on dynamic interpretation of Laplace transform to help aid intuition (pp. 6–4 to 6–6).
Linear algebra is not a prerequisite for this course, so I avoided teaching state-variable analysis my first year. But, since state-variable analysis is very important in systems theory, I added a section on state-variable analysis (Section 7), including a thorough introduction to matrix algebra.
I added an entire section (Section 9) reviewing the course to aid the students studying for the final exam.
I typeset the lecture notes. While this was an enormous investment of time, I believe it will make future revisions easier, and result in even higher-quality teaching in the future.

 Files available for viewing

View the ECE3510 Course Reader (284 pages; Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader–only available on CD-ROM dossier)

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