Customer Reviews

Digital Communication

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a great book and should be widely available as a reference/textbook. Unfortunately, it is difficult to get a copy of the book and the book is ridiculously priced for a student (and therefore is unlikely to be purchased by a library). It's a shame that such a great piece of work isn't more easily purchased online or directly from the publisher. I've tried to buy a second copy of the book after finding the first in a book store and am still waiting for it to arrive after ordering the book two months ago.

I would ask the authors to demand, from the publisher, that this outstanding book be made more accessible.

As for the content of the book, the selection of topics and coverage are no less than outstanding. The authors will discuss a topic and then provide an example to illustrate how the topic is applied. Most, if not all, of the fundamental topics in digital communications are covered. Well documented references are provided if the reader desires more information than what's given in the book.

Used at many universities such as Georgia Tech, and as reference as in Valencia Polytechnic University, this is a must read book for every engineer in the world of communications...later it will serve you as a great reference, a good volume for your library. Wish there were more book like this one!! Adeu!

Even if very complete, very few explaination. Ridiculously expensive. Not a good buy.

This textbook is very strong on Pulse Amplitude Modulation (PAM) (Chapter 5) basic MLSD/Viterbi detection (Ch 7) Equalization (8 & 9) as well as continuous and and discrete-time PLLs (ch 14), and carrier and timing recovery (15 & 16). I feel the material about Error Control (12) is introductory and I haven't read the chapters on MIMO, and fading.

The text is very readable and the derivations are not too bad, meaning even though many are left as 'exercizes for the reader', there are answers in the back which if you miss a step you can kind of work backward and figure it out (note: not the problems at the back of the chapter just the in chapter exercizes)

I recommend this book unless you already have the 1st or 2nd edition already.

Strengths of the book:

1. Emphasis on concepts.

The book tries to expalin the concept behind each topic and provide the insight. Once the readed is equipped with those, details of practical implementations can be easily obtained from the list of references given after each chapter.

2. Mathematical rigor.

This does not mean tedious, multi-page derivations, but clearly stated *assumpions*, such as properties of functions, distributions, convergence, integrability, etc. Some key mathematical results are collected in the initial chapters. Carefully selected excersises at the end of each chapter allow the reader to familarize himself with the basics of the mathematical objects used.

3. Systematic approach.

Unlike many other books on communications, the books is *not* a collection of various modulation techniques and their performance characteristics. Instead, the authors develop very systematic approach based on signal spaces, where all modern communications technicues fall into their own places. Details of specific modulation techniques are highlighted as examples for the related concepts.


The book also has a website with errata and a few chapters which did not make it to the third edition:

http://users.ece.gatech.edu/~barry/digital/

Overall, the book is highly recommended to a student of communications as well as a practicing communicaiton engineer.

The very nice thing about this book is that it breathes fresh air into advanced communication textbooks that somehow got stuck on standard classical topics.. Texts such as those by Proakis still have the fundamentals, but there you won't really get a taste of relatively newer and extremely important topics such as 1. Sphere Decoding and modern ML detection (in which the author is a real expert in) 2. Multicarrier Transmission (e.g. OFDM) and 3. MIMO channels..

The second point I'd like to make is that Barry is a fairly intuitive professor.. I've noticed this before purchasing his book while attending his tutorial on MIMO detection in IEEE Globecom 2009, and his book proves this as well. For instance, his treatment of "Just Enough" Information Theory is well motivated and logically explained. Another example is his confinement of detection to minimum euclidean distance criteria, which -as he himself justifies- is intuitive while still capturing the logic behind most practical algorithms (Van Trees' Detection and Estimation is far more general and much more difficult to explain while the current practice is hardly justifiable in my opinion for first year grad students)

The only thing I have against this book (aside from the +20$ overprice!) is that the focus is not always distributed according to the importance of a topic.. Sometimes he spends too much time repeating or stressing straightforward issues while leaving three lines for a detailed and difficult concept.. But that's just my personal biased opinion of course!

Whether you're an undergraduate or a graduate, I think this book is worth combining to your collection.. I'm more inclined to consider it for first year graduate students however..

This text is excellent! I have a positive bias towards most of the works of Messerschmitt, Lee, Parks et al; and this book is no exception. The added MIMO channel detail in this edition makes it a well-rounded reference.

Although it is a 2nd ed., still too many mistakes. Very few explaination. Ridiculously expensive. Not a good buy.

This book has great breadth as well as depth. I am in sticker shock over the price, however!

The price was much fair. The book was sent much sooner than expected (by free delivery system). It was quite a good deal!