🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1ednj3INNnup@daisy.ee.und.ac.za> spaday@daisy.ee.und.ac.za (Strini Padayachee) writes:
>Hi
>
>I'm an EE grad with a control system background and the work I'm going to be doing is DSP. I'd like to know what the differences and similarities are between 
>these two fields. What distinguishes a Control engineer from a SP engineer??
>Thanx
>
>Strini

DSP can be considered as a small part of control. The main differences, as far
as I can consider, are (1) DSP mainly deals with signals rathan than systems
(i.e. control focuses on transfer functions, DSP focuses on FFTs). (2) The 
signals which DSP will handle are much faster than the signals in process
control.

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J.CHEN                               |E-MAIL: jchen@tomahawk.me.gu.edu.au
School of Microelectronic Engineering| Phone: +61-7-8755050
Faculty of Science and Technology    |   Fax: +61-7-8755198
Griffith University                  |   Fax: +61-7-8755050
Nathan, QLD 4111, Australia          | 
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In article <1992Nov19.222938.28354@griffin.itc.gu.edu.au> jchen@tomahawk.me.gu.edu.au (Jinghong CHEN) writes:
>In article <1ednj3INNnup@daisy.ee.und.ac.za> spaday@daisy.ee.und.ac.za (Strini Padayachee) writes:
>>What distinguishes a Control engineer from a SP engineer??

>DSP can be considered as a small part of control. The main differences, as far
>as I can consider, are (1) DSP mainly deals with signals rathan than systems
>(i.e. control focuses on transfer functions, DSP focuses on FFTs). (2) The 
>signals which DSP will handle are much faster than the signals in process
>control.

(Well, it's been awhile since I've seen a flame-fest in comp.dsp, but I 
have a strange feeling that one may be coming on.  :-)

This is not only an oversimplification of the situation; it's just
plain inaccurate.  DSP is *not* a subset of controls.  And DSP uses
transfer functions all the time.  That's exactly how a lowpass filter
is characterized!  DSP and controls use many of the same techniques but
with different goals.  The goal of DSP is simply to process signals --
to manipulate them into a form that is in some sense more useful
(Fourier transforms, lowpass filters, deconvolution, compression,
etc.).  In controls, the goal is to control a process.  Sometimes this
involves manipulating signals, but that isn't an end in itself.  The
goal is to achieve a specified output given a physical system.

As an example, if DSP is a subset of controls, then I would like to
know how data compression fits within a controls framework.  (I realize
that one can make analogies, but that's not the same as saying that
compression is a controls problem.)



--
Stan Reeves
Auburn University, Department of Electrical Engineering, Auburn, AL  36849
INTERNET: sjreeves@eng.auburn.edu

In article <sjreeves.921120110631@fourier.ee.eng.auburn.edu> sjreeves@eng.auburn.edu (Stan Reeves) writes:
>
>This is not only an oversimplification of the situation; it's just
>plain inaccurate.  DSP is *not* a subset of controls.  And DSP uses
>transfer functions all the time.  That's exactly how a lowpass filter
>is characterized!  DSP and controls use many of the same techniques but
>with different goals.  The goal of DSP is simply to process signals --
>to manipulate them into a form that is in some sense more useful
>(Fourier transforms, lowpass filters, deconvolution, compression,
>etc.).  In controls, the goal is to control a process.  Sometimes this
>involves manipulating signals, but that isn't an end in itself.  The
>goal is to achieve a specified output given a physical system.

However a complete control system has input signals which also need to be
manipulate into a form that is in some sense more useful. 

>As an example, if DSP is a subset of controls, then I would like to
>know how data compression fits within a controls framework.  (I realize
>that one can make analogies, but that's not the same as saying that
>compression is a controls problem.)

The inputs of a control system can be anything including compressed data and
images. For instance a polymer reactor control system controls the molecular
size based on a compressed image data (gif format) taken by a micrographier.

>Stan Reeves
>Auburn University, Department of Electrical Engineering, Auburn, AL  36849
>INTERNET: sjreeves@eng.auburn.edu

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J.CHEN                               |E-MAIL: jchen@tomahawk.me.gu.edu.au
School of Microelectronic Engineering| Phone: +61-7-8755050
Faculty of Science and Technology    |   Fax: +61-7-8755198
Griffith University                  |   Fax: +61-7-8755050
Nathan, QLD 4111, Australia          | 
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-- 
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