Mathematics for Electrical Engineering and Computing

Book Preface

This book is based onmynotes from lectures to students of electrical, electronic, and computer engineering at South Bank University. It presents a first year degree/diploma course in engineering mathematics with an emphasis on important concepts, such as algebraic structure, symmetries, linearity, and inverse problems, clearly presented in an accessible style. It encompasses the requirements, not only of students with a good maths grounding, but also of those who, with enthusiasm and motivation, can make up the necessary knowledge. Engineering applications are integrated at each opportunity. Situations where a computer should be used to perform calculations are indicated and ‘hand’ calculations are encouraged only in order to illustrate methods and important special cases. Algorithmic procedures are discussed with reference to their efficiency and convergence, with a presentation appropriate to someone new to computational methods.

Developments in the fields of engineering, particularly the extensive use of computers and microprocessors, have changed the necessary subject emphasis within mathematics. This has meant incorporating areas such as Boolean algebra, graph and language theory, and logic into the content. A particular area of interest is digital signal processing, with applications as diverse as medical, control and structural engineering, non-destructive testing, and geophysics. An important consideration when writing this book was to give more prominence to the treatment of discrete functions (sequences), solutions of difference equations and z transforms, and also to contextualize the mathematics within a systems approach to engineering problems.