Customer Reviews

Analog and Digital Communications (Schaum's Outlines)

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Hsu gives you a wide spread of topics. The book certainly has an impressive coverage. It talks about most types of digital modulation techniques, like Pulse Code Modulation. Plus, there is an explanation of random processes and simple probability. Necessary because of the inherent stochastic nature of much of communications. Which then leads directly into information theory, and the key Shannon concepts of how to find a quantitative measure of information in a channel with a given signal power and noise power.

Understand, though, that the very breadth of the discussion means that Hsu often only has time for a brief venture into each topic. But, then again, the book's title does say "Outline". This is really a review book, rather than a text from which to learn material for the first time.

This is an excellent supplement for upper level undergraduate electrical engineering students enrolled in a communications class, particularly if either "Modern Digital and Analog Communication Systems" by Lathi or "Communication Systems Engineering" by Proakis is being used as the main textbook. This outline follows along with the topics in those books particularly well. The first two chapters go into the basics of signals and systems and discuss linearity, time invariance, impulse response, and the Fourier and Hilbert transforms. The next two chapters discuss the principles of amplitude and frequency modulation. The next four chapters cover the idea of random processes from the standpoint of communication theory. First the concepts of probability and random variables are introduced. Then random processes themselves are outlined. Finally these concepts are applied in chapters on noise in communication and hypothesis testing. I think this section of the outline does a particularly good job of presenting material and worked problems on possibly one of the hardest topics to understand in electrical engineering undergraduate studies. The final two chapters of the outline cover the basics of information theory and error control coding.
The depth of material presented is not sufficient for self-study, but is very good supplemental material. The problems are excellent with many worked out examples, and there are more than enough illustrations and figures to help explain the subject. I highly recommend this outline.

A concise and useful analysis approach on the subject. It is intended for a junior or higher level college audience. I used this for more technical details while taking an engineering technology course on communications.

I'm glad amazon is available and has such a large selection of products, otherwise I would have bombed my electrical engineering classes.

The book was in great condition for the price.

Excellent book...very easy to read and filled with examples to help you visualize. Lots of problems to practice.
It is an overall excellent book to assist you; especially if the book you were assigned in class sucks.

I have used Schaum's outlines for 40 years and this is no different. Excellent explanations and problem solving.