• Multirate Systems And Filter Banks (Prentice Hall Signal Processing Series)
• Understanding Digital Signal Processing (2nd Edition)
• Digital Signal Processing with Field Programmable Gate Arrays (Signals and Communication Technology)
• Streamlining Digital Signal Processing: A Tricks of the Trade Guidebook
• Multirate Digital Signal Processing (Prentice-Hall Signal Processing Series)

This book is not a useful reference for a DSP design engineer
Review written by: Richard N From United States
I purchased the book "Multirate Signal Processing for Communication Systems" by Fredric J. Harris because it contained an entire chapter devoted to the Cascaded Integrator Comb (CIC) filter. This filter, sometimes referred to as the Hogenauer Filter, can be used to implement efficient multirate decimation and interpolation filters for large rate changes.

To date no author of any book or technical paper that I am aware of has ever been able to explain the mathematics of pruning bits in each of the N stages of a CIC decimation filter design. I had high hopes that Harris's book would finally be the one book that would go where no book has gone before.

Unfortunately the book could not be previewed on Amazon so I bought the book on faith alone. I ended up being disappointed. In his treatment of CIC filters that are used for sample rate decimation he presents an obtuse equation with 6 variables that is supposed to explain something about determining the number of bits that can be pruned from each stage of an N stage CIC decimation filter. This equation was presented right out of the blue, without any definition of what the 6 variables represented. Nothing preceded the equation, or followed the equation, that was relevant to explaining what the equation was or how to use it. Somehow the reader was supposed to magically figure out how this equation and all of its undefined variables, is relevant to CIC bit pruning. I held out some hope that this equation had been derived and explained in previous chapters, so I spent several hours searching the book from the beginning to the end for any material that was remotely connected to that equation. I had no success.

I have read many papers and texts by many authors that dealt with CIC filters. Without exception all the authors arm waved and side stepped this critical point, but this is the first time I have ever seen something as crazy as this.

Since I bought the book, I went ahead and read the remainder to see if it contained any new material applicable to the field of digital signal processing. It did not.

My impression of this book is that it is well suited for engineering managers who need a quick and glossed over summary of multirate DSP basics and buzz words so that they can sit in a conference room, nod their heads, and give the appearance of understanding what a design engineer is presenting.

This book really isn't of much use to an "in the trenches" DSP design engineer. It contains no detailed engineering design information, no valuable design examples, and no insight to real world problems, real world design issues or their solutions. There are no illustrative engineering applications presented that utilize multi rate signal processing.

The book does contain a lot of illustrations that look to be transplanted Mat Lab plots but there is not a great deal of associated text or mathematics that explains the intent of these plots.

Even though my review is negative, I hope that it is presented in a positive way. I guess I am disappointed because I paid about 78 dollars for this book and I will never get any meaningful engineering use from it.

In summary, this book is not a useful resource for a DSP design engineer. For practicing design engineers involved in Multi Rate designs, I would recommend the technically excellent book by Rabiner and Crochiere titled "Multirate Digital Signal Processing", published by Prentice Hall 1983. It is a bit difficult to read, but if you sit down with a pencil and paper and work the examples, study the equations, and make these equations meaningful by drawing the DSP architectures that they describe you will come away with a deep understanding of the subject.

Non Stop Pleasure
Review written by: Mohammad Omer From Atlanta
Oooh Boy, oooooh Boy. I have never known Professor Harris, but I can imagine the kind of gentlemen he would be. This book is a distilled NON STOP pleasure. Every little sentence, and I mean, Literally every little sentence, will get to the sweet spot, and tickle you again again, until you have spent the whole of yourself, and are wondering, what , what exactly is there after ecstasy. I am a radio engineer, since the last 20 years, but have spent almost half a decade, building line modems for a living. This book, with every word, hits me in the right spots, but then, this kind of background is a little clumsy. Nonetheless, I suspect if you are a communication engineer and a little into wireless this guy is going to get groans out of you !!!!!!

The Reference Standard for Multirate Processing
Review written by: R. A Benson From
I wish this work were available when I was implementing multi-rate, multi stage filters with MSI integrated circuits and a wire wrap gun! But we are now in the FPGA world, and professor harris's work is in tune with today's hardware implementations. His attention to implementation efficiency with realistic comparisons is valuable. My only minor "ding" would be that some of the MATLAB code is not well documented and the results take some effort to interpret. That said, having the MATLAB code is a BIG plus. Even better would be to have Simulink models of the filters.

Maybe I am the only one who didn't get much out of this book
Review written by: Mark Dickmann From Palm Harbor, FL
I was hoping to get a good understanding of multirate DSP out of this text, having no knowledge of it previously. However, I was not succesful. The text starts out well with a practical illuminating example of the use of multirate signal processing. However, I was not able to absorb much knowledge in the subsequent chapters and gave up on continuing. There are very few equations in this book, which to me was initially promising as I am tired of DSP math books. The author relies more on graphics and figures to explain his point, but I found that the detail was lacking. Perhaps someone with stronger background in this area would be better served by this text.

A DSP classic!
Review written by: Kenneth C. Crandall From Sunnyvale, CA
Every decade or so a book comes out that distills a lot if scattered knowledge on an important subject into one concise and comprehensible tutorial. This is such a book. It introduces new ideas on better ways to skin the proverbial DSP cat!

This book clearly explains sampling rate switching architectures and how they can greatly reduce processing cycles and simplify digital and analog hardware. I've used a few of these tricks in the past, but what an eye opener to see so many great examples of sneaky DSP.

Fred Harris makes it clear with vivid examples and MatLab illustrations that using multi-rate signal processing moves you into a whole new class of implementations. No longer does one ask, "What sampling rate do I need to satisfy Nyquist? The question is now, "What sampling rate do I need in each section to optimize the design? This book helps the DSP practitioner answer that question. The sampling rate degree of freedom liberates! Use it and prosper!