Digital Signal Processing

This course starts 10 October at 14:00 in LT2 and continues for 16 lectures on Monday/Wednesday/Friday until 17 November 2025, followed by a written test on Friday 21 November 14:00 in LT2. There is no lecture on Wed 22 October 2025 (due to the Wheeler Lecture).

Lecture notes

(drafts)

• Presentation slides 4:3, 16:10, 16:9 – for projector
• Handout version for printing – 4 slides per side of A4
• Large-print version of handout – 2 slides per side of A4
• Tablet-computer version of handout

Programming language

The programming assignments should be completed in a high-level technical computing language, such as Julia (recommended), MATLAB or Python+NumPy+matplotlib+SciPy.

A brief introduction to Julia will be given on Wednesday 15 October 2025 at 09:00 in LT1, as part of the 3rd year undergraduate LaTeX and Julia lectures.

• Introduction to Julia slides (2up, 4up for printing)
• Introduction to MATLAB slides (pre-recorded older lecture)

Demonstration and exercise materials

• Suggested Julia version: for Michaelmas 2025, I’d still use 1.10, which you currently get with “juliaup add lts” and then “juliaup default lts”. (This is because the latest release 1.12 came out only a few days before the start of term and will have received less testing. After the end of term, I’d switch to that with “juliaup default release”.)
• Pluto notebook of some plots and demos
  Install Julia and Pluto.jl, then open notebook with

  $ julia
  julia> import Pluto
  julia> Pluto.run(notebook="dsp-notebook.jl")
  

• Zoneplate sampler, zoneplate bitmap (lecture 5)
• touchtone.wav (Assignment 2)
• Touchtone specification: ITU-T Recommendations Q.23 and Q.24 (Assignment 2)
• fsk1.wav, fsk2.wav (Assignment 2)
• stars-blurred.png, stars-psf.png (Assignment 2)
• IQ sampled recordings of FM radio broadcasts (Assignment 3):
  • iq-fm-96M-240k.dat
    center frequency 96.0 MHz (= BBC Radio Cambridgeshire), sample rate 240 kHz, 30 s, 38 MB
  • iq-fm-97M-3.6M.dat
    center frequency 97.0 MHz, sample rate 3.6 MHz, 3.5 s, 102 MB, covers three FM radio stations
• IQ sampled (simulated) radar signals (Assignment 3):
  • radar1.hdf5
  • radar2.hdf5
• Image files bear.png and boat.png used in the demonstration (lectures 15–16, source)
• JPEG standard: ITU-T Recommendation T.81
• CST Part II Tripos paper exam questions on Digital Signal Processing from 2004−2020 and their solution notes

Related links

• DSP textbook with full text online: Steven W. Smith: The Scientist and Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing
• This course is only a brief introduction into the basics of Digital Signal Processing. For in-depth coverage, have a look at the entire series of courses taught on the same subject in the Engineering Tripos:
  • 2P6 Fourier Transforms, Signal & Data Analysis (Part IB)
  • Module 3F1 – Signals and Systems (Part IIA)
  • Module 3F3 – Signal and Pattern Processing (Part IIA)
  • Module 4F7 – Digital Filters and Spectrum Estimation (Part IIB)
• comp.dsp FAQ
• Cool videos: mechanical implementation of the inverse DCT and the DCT.