Review by
Neel Rambhia, 2026(B.Tech.)
Course Offered In
Autumn 2023
Instructors
Prof. Vikram Gadre
Prerequisites
None. This is a core courses for all the students of the department.
Difficulty
3/5 (on a scale of 1-5 with 5 being very tough)
Course Content
The Professor had divided the course into 4 modules: Module 1: Types of signals (continuous time and discrete time), Properties of signals (linearity, causality, etc.), Linear Shift Invariant Signals, Convolution Module 2: Fourier Transform and Fourier Domain Analysis of Signals Module 3: Sampling and Reconstruction Module 4: Generalized Transforms - Laplace and Z Transform
Feedback on Lectures
The professor is quite enthusiastic during lectures. He makes the classes interactive through many examples and activities. He teaches on the board and hence it is useful to attend classes and make notes there. He had derived most of the things from the basics and also encouraged people to come and solve questions on the board. He gives challenge questions to solve after class which is a part of the bonus in the evaluation scheme (mentioned ahead). My suggestion would be to attend all his lectures. He does take attendance in all his lectures and gives some bonus marks based on them. You will not be able to proxy because he is smarter than you :))
Feedback on Evaluations
He follows a unique mode of evaluation. He had kept two types of scores- a saturated score and an unsaturated score and finally grading was done based on the best of the two scores. Saturated score is the usual exam based scores (2 regular quizzes + Midsems(25%) + Endsem(40%) + 1 Surprise Quiz). All the exams were closed book. Unsaturated score consists of bonus marks over and above the saturated score. These bonus marks are given for answering any of the challenge questions he gives during the lectures (we can answer a maximum of 3 challenge questions during the entire course duration in a team of upto 3 people). Additionally he had organised a peer exhibition (optional) where in the teams we had to pick up 1-2 research papers and present our understanding to our peers. These too added to bonus marks. Also, occasionally he gave bonus marks for attendance. Speaking of the exams, they are easy to solve if we are well revised with the course content, solve the tutorials and references. There might be few questions which require thinking, rest can be directly solved. Personally, I felt Midsem was on a tougher side while Endsem and Quizzes were easier. Grading was a little tough though in my opinion.
Study Material and References
Sir’s recorded lectures are available on YouTube and NPTEL. Although I have never seen them, what reviews I got were that they are really good if someone wants to understand Signal Processing well however they might not be relevant wholly to the course content now. Following lectures is sufficient. For practice, sir’s tutorials (also available on NPTEL) are very nice. Apart from that I followed one reference book: A.V. Oppenheim, A.S. Willsky with S. Hamid Nawab, ““Signals and Systems””, Pearson Education Signal Processing Series, Second Edition, Sixth Indian Reprint, 2004.
Here the course content is explained nicely and has ample amount of text back questions to practice from. I majorly used it for practice.
Sir also suggests other references, but I did not feel any requirement to go through them.
Follow-up Courses
Any advanced Signal and Systems Courses. EE 338 (Digital signal processing) EE 678 (Wavelets)”
Final Takeaway This course is very engaging for math enthusiasts and you will use some of your JEE maths as well. If you are disciplined and regular throughout the course, it would be a cakewalk.