I wanted to just kind of say a little bit about what

we're going to be focusing on.

And pretty much, in 341, a picture
that you see over and over again-and this is the picture that you've
seen in 6.003 and 6.011-- is talking about systems.
And so the input to the system might be a discrete time
signal.
It might be a continuous time signal.
The output would be written similarly.
And then, if it's an LTI system, then there
is a system function.
And depending on whether we're talking
continuous time or discrete time, it may be h of s.
It may be h of z.
We may be talking about, in the frequency domain, if this
is the continuous time frequency variable.
In discrete time, we would typically
write things that way.
And then there's the notion, for example,
of talking about the impulse response, and then
the relationship between the output, and the input,
and the impulse response.
And so all of you, presumably, have
seen equations of this type, where
I would write h of n convolved with x of n,
or I would write y of t is h of t convolved with x of t.
And then, in talking about these systems,
we would have various kinds of notions that would come up.
For example, questions of causality,
questions of stability.
We would be talking about z transforms.
To be talking about time and variance,
we would be talking about linearity, Laplace transforms,
et cetera.
And that's sort of the typical signals and systems
kind of notion and discussion.
A lot of the systems that we'll be talking about
are systems that are characterized
by linear constant coefficient difference equations.
And so what does a linear constant coefficient difference
equation correspond to?
Well, the kind of generic form of it
is, you've got a sum of coefficients multiplying
delayed replicas of the output, and that's
equal to a linear combination of delayed replicas of the input.
And so this would be k equals 0 to n,
and this would be k equals 0 to m.
And so this is the kind of generic form
of linear constant coefficient difference equation-linear meaning not necessarily that it's a linear system,
but it's a linear combination.
Constant coefficient obviously meaning these coefficients
are constant.
And difference equation, well, there actually
aren't differences in there.
But historically, it's called a difference equation because,
if you took a differential equation,
and then you replaced the derivatives by differences,
then you're going to get something of this form.

And so, historically, that's kind

of where the terminology comes from.
Now, there are a lot of things about this equation that
are often misconceptions.
Well, first of all, just in terms of terminology,
I would typically-- people in the field
would typically refer to this equation as an n-th order
linear constant coefficient difference equation,
because of the number of terms involving
the delays of the output.
But then, sometimes, we end up with just all these ak's,
except for k equals 0 equal 0.
And then, we would end up talking about it
as an m-th order equation.
And you kind of wonder, or could ask, well,
why don't you talk about it as an n comma m-th order equation,
where it's n on the left side or m on the right side?
And the basic answer to that is because the order
of the equation-- and probably most of you know this,
and you'll see it when we talk about flow graph structures,
that the number in the implementation, the number
of delay registers that are needed,
is the greater of n or m.
And most typically, n is greater than m.
And so that's why it's called n-th order.
So you'll see that terminology.
Now, other kinds of questions that you
can ask-- that it's important to get sorted out
about linear constant coefficient difference
equations is-- if I give you the input x of n for the system,
does this equation uniquely specify the output?
And in my typical lecturing mode,
I'd sort of put that question out to the class.
I'd ask for hands.
I'm trying to break that style of lecturing.
But I'm still going to do it, I guess,
just so I get this feedback.
So how many of you would say that,
if I gave you the coefficients-- the a's and the b's-- and I
gave you the input, that that uniquely specifies the output?
How many of you would say that?
Well, the answer is it does not.
And there are multiple reasons for that.
So one reason is that there's the whole issue
of initial conditions.
Or that kind of relates to the homogeneous solution.
That is, you can always add a homogeneous solution
to any solution, and it'll still satisfy the equation.
So this equation is a constraint between the input
to the output.
It's not a mapping from the input to the output.
So then there are questions that come up of,
how do I make it unique?
Well, maybe I specify something that
pins down the homogeneous solution.
And now, there's a unique relationship
between the input, the output.
And then, in that case, does that
correspond to a linear system?
Does it correspond to a time and variance system?

And those are also kind of tricky questions.

And the answer is-- and is it causal?
And a lot of the answer to that depends
on how I specify this homogeneous solution.
Furthermore, if now, suppose I said here's the difference
equation, and I'm telling you-- I'm
telling you that, in addition to specifying the difference
equation, I'm also telling you that the system is
linear and time invariant.
Can I now conclude that the system is causal?
No.
Can I conclude that, with this information, this information,
knowing x of n, that y of n is uniquely specified?
No.
And these are all things that you
want to get sorted out quickly.
They're straightforward-- the answers to those.
Straightforward.
How to think about it is straightforward.
Now, something I can do is I can take that equation-and let's suppose that a0 is equal to 1.
Doesn't have to be, but I can divide it out.
And then, let me just rewrite that equation
so that I have-- I'll write it as y of n
is the sum from 1 to n.
I guess I have a minus sign now, because I'm
going to take it over to the other side.
a sub k y of n minus k, plus the sum k equals 0 to m, b sub k,
x of n minus k.
OK, now can I say that the system is causal?
Because now, the way I've written it,
I'm generating y of n at any n by only using past values of y
and current and past values of x.
So then, is it causal?
Well, clearly not.
Because if that equation wasn't, this equation
is the same equation.
I mean, I just took some terms over to the other side.
So that's another thing to kind of get straightened out.
So just because I wrote it in a form
like this, which is called recursive-- meaning
I've written it where current values are generated
from past values of the output and current and past values
of the input.
That means I'm running it in a certain way, recursively.
But it doesn't mean that it's a causal system.
You want to have that clearly straightened out in your mind.
Now one other thing is-- so this terminology,
which is recursive and non-recursive,
and then some other terminology which
we'll want to be referring to, which is FIR and IIR.
So for example, if I take this equation,
and I say that all of these ak's that I put over here
are equal to 0-- so I'm saying y of n is the sum of b sub k x
of n minus k-- if I hit this with an impulse,
then what I will generate for y of n
is this sequence of these coefficients.
This, in fact, is the convolution sum.
So these b sub k's, in fact, would be the impulse response.
And there's only a finite number of them.

So the length of the impulse response is finite.

On the other hand, if I wrote an equation that said y of n
is equal to x of n plus 1/2 y of n minus 1,
and I run this equation, the impulse response,
assuming this is LTI and causal-so that's the additional information I'm giving you,
LTI and causal.
This impulse response is going to go on forever.
So this one is going to be IIR.