Prandoni and Vetterli wrote:The present text evolved from course notes developed over a period of a dozen years teaching undergraduates the basics of signal processing for communications. The students had mostly a background in electrical engineering, computer science or mathematics, and were typically in their third year of studies at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), with an interest in communication systems. Thus, they had been exposed to signals and systems, linear algebra, elements of analysis (e.g. Fourier series) and some complex analysis, all of this being fairly standard in an undergraduate program in engineering sciences.

The notes having reached a certain maturity, including examples, solved problems and exercises, we decided to turn them into an easy-to-use text on signal processing, with a look at communications as an application. But rather than writing one more book on signal processing, of which many good ones already exist, we deployed the following variations, which we think will make the book appealing as an undergraduate text.