This book provides an accessible introduction to signals and systems for electrical engineering, computer engineering, and computer science students, and is based on several years of successful classroom use at the University of California, Berkeley. The material starts with an early introduction to applications, well before students have built up enough theory to fully analyze the applications. This motivates students to learn the theory and allows students to master signals and systems at the sophomore level. The material motivates signals and systems through sound and images, as opposed to circuits, and as such calculus is the only prerequisite.

The book is accompanied by a robust website with detailed notes and illustrative applets for most every topic. These applets include interactive manipulation of sound and images, making the material dynamic and understandable to all students. The book also contains extensive lab material. This lab material is based on Matlab and Simulink, and helps students build a bridge between the "what is" aspects of signals and systems as taught in the text, and the "how to" aspects of signals and systems as used in the real world.