Customer Reviews

Digital Communications: A Discrete-Time Approach

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

 

 

Having just read the first couple of chapters and some of chapter 3, I'd have to say that the book is well-written and explains things well, and is well organized, but suffers from a large number of annoying typos. It makes me wonder if an editor even proofread it. While most of the typos are harmless annoyances, a few of them really do cause confusion and make it difficult to see what he's saying. Hopefully there will be a second edition that fixes these annoying mistakes.

This book is so poorly edited that it is impossible to read. A page that should take 2 minutes to read takes 10 because there are so many confusing typos and errors that you have to stop and think about what the author /meant/ to say. Worse yet are the cases where the errors are so bad that you can't even figure out what was intended (unless you already knew the material).

To summarize: This book has a SNR of 0dB. The information is there, it just can't be reconstructed.

On a side note, I think the Third edition (It's so bad I don't even think they can fix it in a second edition) will be an excellent book.

Nowadays, the digital communications systems are implemented in digital signal processing platforms. The pure discrete-time approach is the trend for every communication engineer and researcher. Dr. Rice is a well-known scholar in telecommunications. His textbook establishes the necessary background, starting from random process and probabilities, to faciliate a clear and insightful view of the practical digital communication systems.

For communication textbooks, the integration of subsystems is very challenging to any author in this special area. However, Dr. Rice is doing a great job in such an organization. His homework problems can help students really be familiar with each subsystem. I would highly recommend this new book for both undergraduate and graduate courses in digital communications.

The first textbook of its kind. The author treats digital communications and digital signal processing as an integrated topic. It is well organized and illustrated. Ideal for the working engineer.