Digital Filters

Some years ago(!) Hamming held a seminar/workshop which I attended. This book was the handout. As I remember, he said that this book was a result of teaching students at the Naval Post Graduate School where he found that the students were smart/bright/quick, but just rusty on their math. As a result, the book is not intended for the same audience as Oppenheim and Schaffer. One item that appears to be unique is Hamming's short piece on differentiating filters (the noise increases with frequency when the signal is differentiated, and practical application typically is not interested in the higher frequencies). This is not a cookbook for implementing digital filters. It is a good book for developing insight into the math and development of the basic dsp filter. I still pull it out to look up something, from time-to-time.

Dr. Hamming explains about aliasing just by using cos and sinrelation, without using any transform domain concept which is a typical explanation method in most books.His explanation about frequency resolution also fascinates me.

Hamming famously said, "The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers." This book follows that philosophy: it's a clear, step-by-step development of simple FIR filters, which will make that part of the digital filtering world accessible to almost anyone. It's at about a third-year undergraduate level, very suitable for self-teaching, and contains lots of lore that will help keep you out of trouble.My only complaint is that it doesn't even dip a toe into recursive filters or optimal FIR filters, so that it is far from a complete treatment. If you're new to digital filtering, especially if you don't have an electrical engineering background, this is your book.

I am glad to see that this classic book has been reprinted by Dover

This book introduces major concepts of digital filters. The author starts with the basics (why should we care about digital filters) and ends up with quite complicated things such as recursive filters. This is an excellent book on introductory/intermediate level. In a short, concise form it explains everything what an average engineer/scientist/student who is not involved into professional development of digital filters needs to know about them. What I liked most about this book is that the presentation of the material is very self-consistent. R.W.Hamming starts with the simplest things and proceeds to the next section only when everything what the reader will need in the following is explained. I think, its an excellent buy, especially for this price.