Customer Reviews

MIMO Wireless Communications: From Real-World Propagation to Space-Time Code Design

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There are quite a few books out there on MIMO systems. Naturally, this book contains most of the "traditional" MIMO material, including capacity derivations, space-time codes, and MIMO-OFDM. Yet, in my opinion, it is distinctive in two ways. First of all, from a technical point of view, this is one of the few books that covers realistic MIMO channel models in detail, and ties in those models with the design of MIMO transmission systems. I am by no means an expert on channel modeling, but found the explanations of the different models enlightening and very intuitive. Secondly, from an organizational point of view, this book is written by just two authors. This makes this book vastly more coherent, logical, and structured than other MIMO books, many of which are edited volumes, or written by a large team of authors.

I have been working on OFDM and wanted to jump ships to MIMO as it is getting very hot recently. So I had quite a bit of background on wireless communication but did not have a good understanding (theoretical) of MIMO. So I decided to start with this text. Within a span of maybe a month I found myself buying 3 more books.
1) Introduction to Space-Time Wireless Communications
2) MIMO System Technology for Wireless Communications (Electrical Engineering and Applied Signal Processing)
3) Space-Time Block Coding for Wireless Communications

Fact is it is quite difficult to acquire all the knowledge from one text. But I found this text demanding a little prior knowledge and sometimes you are left wondering where this comes from.
This book is extremely comprehensive. The best of the 4 books. It discusses every equation it presents. Never merely gives an equation. Almost always proves it. Frankly, for me it was a little overwhelming. The book talks in great extent about coding. Actually chapter 5 and onwards are about mostly about coding. So if you don't get chapter 5, like I did, you probably cannot proceed further. But it's just me and maybe I am not able to understand better. Anyway thats how I found the book. That is why I had buy other book. I kept going from one book to the other trying to find a ambiguous place.

So for a beginner I recommend starting with #1 or #3 book. They do not delve in too much complex details and equations. For example, you will find this book discussing about applicability of certain equations in certain SNR regions. Which I did not find in other books.

Finally, this book is an excellent text on MIMO. If you know the fundamentals and want to dig in to coding, this should be the book. The authors have done an excellent job.

The book provides a good starting point to understand mimo. I found that I still need to go through the references (mostly ieee publications) to be able to fully understand the theory.

MIMO systems are everywhere in modern wireless communications. I, like many of my colleagues, am a researcher in this area, and I always found that the biggest problem is the sheer number of papers written on the topic. So I was glad to get my hands on this book. I like it a lot; in particular I like the breadth of coverage. It is not often (at least not often enough) that mutual coupling of the antennas is treated; that the effect of channel frequency selectivity is taken into account, and so on. When developing a system that works in the real world, such considerations are vital. At the same time, there is a lot of math in the book, giving it the rigor that is amiss in "cookbooks". If you are a serious researcher the MIMO area, this book should be on your shelf!

The subject is analyzed by the authors in a very detailed form, presenting several new developments about MIMO. I already have searched other related books and I concluded about the good way adopted by the authors in the manner to describe the subject.