Customer Reviews

Fundamentals of Wireless Communication

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I had purchased the digital edition of this book to strengthen my fundamentals in wireless communication theory as I am preparing to enrol for graduate study. While going through the book, I found that, the author has rightly focussed on the most fundamental aspect of wireless communications i.e. maximizing the capacity and at the same time getting rid of effects of radio propagation channels. Not only the author presents the text superbly supported with mathematical explanations but also uses felicitously chosen examples from the gamut of wireless technology to put forth the concepts. Moreover, plenteous problems at each chapter's end strenthened my understanding of the subject matter. I am yet to go over MIMO which has also been explicitly presented in the book.

I'm a Communication Engineering PhD student. I just finished a Wireless course using this text. The subject matter is difficult and abstract. Tse and Viswanath do an outstanding job in interpreting many complex concepts. In fact, there are very few (if any) comparable books that venture in the direction that these authors take. Stephen Wilson's "Digital Modulation and Coding" and David MacKay "Information Theory, Inference & Learning Algorithms" come close. The great digital communications references: Lin and Costello, Wozencraft and Jacobs, Gallager, Proakis, Viterbi and Omura, present material in a very precise academic way with some effort to interpret results. However, none of these classics make the effort that T&V do distilling and communicating the essential concepts from start to finish. This is a talent in itself and T&V has really shown the beauty in this material. However, there is one criticism, the exercises have a high degree of difficulty. It would have better to include some easier warm up problems.

Yes, this book gives you basic knowledge about wireless system, particularly terrestrial cellular system.

While wireless communications began with Tesla (or Marconi) a very long time ago, the developments in the last few years have been dramatic and dynamic. First came cellular telephone technology, and more recently wireless data applications. Second is the dramatic progress in VLSI technology which has enabled small-area and low-power implementation of sophisticated signal processing and coding. Third has been the success of the later digital wireless standards, especially the IS-95 Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) wireless standard.

This book is aimed at a first year graduate school level course in wireless communication and is usually taught in the electrical engineering department.

Virtually every aspect of sending a signal through the air is discussed from power, frequency, noise, fading, interference, and from a hardware standpoint the all important antennas including design, positioning, reflections, and shadowing.

This book is the most up to date available, and has been used in preliminary form at a good cross section of universities across the country.

This actually is the only book that presents a treatment of wireless communincations in throughly rigorous way, and yet does not loose touch with practice. The usual books in digital communication, especially the industry standard Salehi, have mostly been outdated by this book.

I have done coursework with Viswanath, and was one of the students on which the initial drafts of this books was "tried and tested." Viswanath has few equals in his research area (which itself he keeps expanding), and consistently amazes everyone with how closely he is in touch with what the industry is doing. This is reflected throughout the book.

The book can be reqd with the standard prereqs - a good understanding of undergraduate to first year graduate probability is required understand anything in communications theory, so that goes without saying. Some parts of the book will carry more juice for people who have a good knowledge of information theory, but Tse & Viswanath include a beautifully written appendix for people without this knowledge. The appendix is worth reading by itself, even for people who have taken courses in information theory before! The chapter that compares various wireless systems alone is worth the price of the book.

As another reviewer pointed out, the exercises are not all simple. These were given in a homework setting, and there were TA's to assist people with the problems. They may be a little hard to solve alone.

Tse and Viswanath have done an excellent job with this book. The book is organized for graduate students (or practicing engineers) and it is a great resource for wireless communications. It can be easily read with a probability background. The necessary background for information theory is provided as an appendix. The analysis of the topics are easy to follow and the intuition behind the results are provided. I think, it is a must have book for wireless communications (especially if you are working in physical layer).

The book is well-written, in general. It tells the whole story: from the beginning, motivation to the way of solving problem.

It is really a must-have reference if you are doing R&D in communication systems.

This book is quite dated(about 6 years now) but still it covers the fundamentals of wireless communications quite strongly. relevant mathetical derivations are provided to calculate fading and diversity. MIMO coverage though a bit outdated is quite strong and explained very legibly.

overall the best book in fundamentals of wireless communications. 5 Stars.

my advice: read this book as a Foundation Base and once completed then go onto the read the additional recent developments in wireless industry. This book will serve as a strong foundational base for Wireless comm.

Compares well with the classics:
1) Gallagher
2) Wozencraft & Jacobs
3) O & S (Signal processing)

This is how text books ought to be written. Also, David Tse was key in developing the multiuser diversity concepts at QCOM. Hence - the book also has good engineering isights.