Teaching Signals and Systems via General Public License software during COVID-19 lockdown

This paper focuses on various possible applications of the GNU General Public License free software functionality. During the lockdown, end users are granted the freedom of studying at home using this license. Our efforts are focused on the use of GNU Octave. This software is a high-level programming language, primarily intended for numerical computations. Octave is suitable for illustrating basic linear and nonlinear problems that occur in telecommunications and are studied on the “Signals and Systems” course. Octave is a good alternative of the most used commercial software in this area, like MA TLAB and Mathematika. Specific features have been considered in the design of exercises. The methodology of exercises for students is described in this paper.