Customer Reviews

Communication Systems for the Mobile Information Society

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If you're looking for a book that provides an overview as well as the details about wireless communication technologies, you should buy this one.

On the one hand, the first few sections of each chapter provide an overview of each technology discussed. They provide a great introduction to the technology and gives a good comparison to the previously covered technologies, so that one doesn't meld into another and all you're left with is a haze of acronyms. If the details are not interesting to you, then you can skip the details and move on to the next chapter.

If the details are interesting or important, then the book does a great job of delving into the intricacies of the technologies as well. The information is well researched and presented in a way that does not have you rereading the sections several times. Its very comprehensible. Its a great resource to have around if you're interested in this subject area.

This is a well written book. The content is sound. I found few typos. I feel the author did his due diligence but would have preferred if he extended it to cover CDMA2000 and 1xEV-DO (only a brief mention) in the same detail as UMTS and HSPDA. I also felt a little slighted with the WLAN coverage. Given the detail and focus provided to the other technologies, I thought the WLAN coverage was simplified and that it was not properly integrated - as a matter of format - with the other technologies discussed.

I also think the book would have benefited from a brief introduction of redundant issues (handover, paging, authentication, etc) and then expounded on the unique attributes of these objects for each technology. In some instances there was reference to prior coverage; in other instances it just seemed monotonous. At the very least, I believe the author should have provided the reader with a chapter/header template with a brief explanation of the rationale for the layout of the book. It would have gone a long way toward framing the overall context for the reader.

On a more positive note, I would have to commend the author on his consistency of detail with most of the book. The writing is very linear and clear, to the extent that I found it unnecessary to check figures against the text to determine meaning. The text made sense on its own. The figures are helpful for reference, but are not necessarily needed to explain what you just read. The book is on the high-end of the price scale, but overall, I think it is a good read and is worth it.