Prerequisites & Notation

Before You Begin

This chapter assumes familiarity with NumPy arrays (Chapter 5) and basic Python scripting. We also use complex-valued arrays and FFTs (Chapter 7) in the phase-plot section. No prior Matplotlib experience is required — we start from scratch.

NumPy arrays, broadcasting, and linspace/meshgrid (Chapter 5)(Review ch05)
Self-check: Can you create a 2D grid with np.meshgrid and evaluate a function on it?
Complex numbers and magnitude/phase (Chapter 5)(Review ch05)
Self-check: Do you know that np.abs(z) gives the magnitude and np.angle(z) gives the phase?
Basic Python: lists, dicts, f-strings(Review ch01)
Self-check: Can you write a for-loop that builds a list of formatted strings?

Notation for This Chapter

Symbols and conventions used throughout this chapter.

Symbol	Meaning	Introduced
$\texttt{fig}$	Matplotlib Figure object — the top-level container	s01
$\texttt{ax}$	Matplotlib Axes object — the plotting surface	s01
$E_b/N_0$	Bit energy to noise spectral density ratio (dB), used in BER plots	s02
$P_b$	Bit error rate (probability)	s02
$DPI$	Dots per inch — controls figure resolution	s05
$H(f)$	Complex-valued frequency response	s06
$\|H(f)\|$ , $\angle H(f)$	Magnitude and phase of the frequency response	s06

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