DISCRETE-SIGNAL ANALYSIS AND DESIGN- P5:Electronic circuit analysis and design projects often involve time-domain and frequency-domain characteristics that are difÞcult to work with using the traditional and laborious mathematical pencil-and-paper methods of former eras. This is especially true of certain nonlinear circuits and sys- tems that engineering students and experimenters may not yet be com- fortable with. | 6 DISCRETE-SIGNAL ANALYSIS AND DESIGN capabilities of Mathcad are used. MATLAB users will have no trouble translating everything in this book directly to their system. Keep printouts and notes for future reference. Mathcad also has an excellent relationship with an EXCEL program that has been configured for complex algebra. EXCEL is an excellent partner to Mathcad for many purposes. An excellent high-quality linear and nonlinear analog and digital circuit simulator such as Multisim Electronics Work Bench a division of world-famous National Instruments Co. which uses accurate models for a wide range of electronic components linear and nonlinear is another long-term investment for the serious electronics engineer and experimenter. And similar to Mathcad your circuit diagram with component values and many kinds of virtual test instruments appears on the screen. A sophisticated embedded graphing capability is included. Less expensive or even free but fairly elementary alternatives are available from many other sources. For example the beginner may want to start with the various forms of SPICE. However Multisim although the up-front cost is significant is a valuable long-term investment that should be considered. Multisim offers various learning editions at reduced cost. I recommend this software especially the complete versions very highly as a long-term tool for linear and nonlinear analysis and simulation. An added RF Design package is available for more sophisticated RF modelling. Mathcad is also interactive with LabVIEW another product of National Instruments Co. which is widely used for laboratory data gathering and analysis. See http analysis for more information on this interesting topic. Another approach that is much less expensive but also much less powerful involves structured programming languages such as BASIC Fortran C Pascal EXCEL and others with which many readers have previous experience. However my suggestion is to get
