Customer Reviews

Modern Electronic Communication (8th Edition)

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

 

 

I believe the mistake that many schools make is using this book too soon with students, and that is why they are confused and complain that this is not for students of "basic" electronic communication. My school did not offer it until the 8th quarter (2 years after start date), so by then the students are be well-instructed in the subject-matter that is required to be known when you study from this book. Also, our instructors are well-educated on the subject, and have no problem explaining any area that the students find confusing.

Some of the hardest and most complex circuits and schematics are not explained at all. Only the simplest things seem easy to understand. The author never demonstrates the equations or where they come from. The author assumes that the reader is a working engineer of technician that needs this book to remember the basics of communication electronics. Definitely not a recommended book to support an introductory course to communications.

I have no idea why my professor chose this book. He had a list of typos that we had to beware of and several of the chapter questions had incorrect answers. Only buy this book if you are required by a class, otherwise look for a more intuitive and better organized text.

The worst electronics book I have ever read. The author assumes and does not establish a firm foundation in which most calculations are made or where constants or formulas are derived from. The book presents some of the material in simple plain english that almost anybody could understand then suddenly skips into a realm in which a person without prior knowledge of the subject is likely to get lost and frustrated. I wish that the school I am attending did not offer this book. I would rather have my money back and purchase a book that really is "student friendly." This book does not incorporate the fundamentals of electronics into the world of communications. The book is full of assumptions that the student knows what,where, how, why and when to use formulas. In addition, the lab supplement is equally confusing and vague. The labs seem to have no overall direction and purpose. They are not laid out in an easy to follow fashion. This book might be better suited for someone who already has had a course in modern electronic communication and is using this book for review/refresher or a study guide. This is NOT a good book for BASIC ELECTRONIC STUDENTS trying to learn modern electronic communication.

This book is likely not suited as a good text for a college-level communications course, however, I feel it is excellent as a reference for Modern Electronic Communication systems. It gives the reader a good basic overview of many, many communication systems without overwhelming the reader with too many details.

This book is written in a manner that assumes prior experiance in this field. The communications teacher who teaches out of this text has a hard time relating subject matter to the format of the book. Almost none of the formula's are worked out and related to subject material. A paragraph of text on one page will talk about a diagram on another page,a formula on yet another page and refer to a future subject, not yet discussed but brought up. The text also talks in constant acronyms and field jargan,making it difficult to get through a paragraph without cross-referencing.I only rate this book 1 star because zero wasn't an option.

As an instructor of this curriculum, I am impressed with the improvements made in this edition from the 7th edition. I like Multisim, but nothing replaces a real world hands on lab. The examples need to consistently show the step-by-step mathematical derivation of the formulas used. In a pure EE curriculum the students will have no problem with this, but in an EET environment, the student may be removed from their math classes by a few years. The consistent step-by-step mathematical derivations would help. The new real world examples are timely. The book is a very good overview for an EET curriculum, but may not be in-depth enough for the EE. The publication does expect the student to have a good working knowledge of semiconductor devices and circuit analysis. I would like to see the next edition teamed up with a good real world hands on lab and include the Multisim as well for a good number of the lab experiments. If you are an instructor, the publication has a number of power point presentations for visual aids. These are modifiable so the instructor can critique the presentation as desired. Overall, the publications is a nice overview of the curriculum, but not an in depth design publication

For me this is a good book to own. Plenty of examples and problems to solve.

I made a living prototyping satellite receiver head for the Ku band dish, called LNB ,which converted 12GHz wave to 500MHz cable TV signal in year 1998-1999 and got an MS in Computer Science in UMass in year 2001. I didn't know about Multisim in year 1999. In year 1999, the simulators, such as Eagleware, that displayed simulated vector network analyzer screen (the smith chart) were strictly RF-only simulators.

Today I went to MIT bookstore to read a book about cable Internet and browsed through this book by accident while standing in the crowd. In the last chapter, this book showed a map of fiber links in the US and another around the globe. It really caught my eyes. That was what I needed and no other books I have read showed any thing close to that. ISP's do research about unused, over built, fiber cables and use those to increase our capacity due to the FiOS competition. That map gave me a good sense of what the whole world's backbone fiber links look like. Then I came home and googled some key words and, boom, I found companies, such as NEF, providing database services about unused fibers for broadband ISP's.

The only comment I have is that the 2 fiber maps in the book were provided by KMI, a company located in Nashua, NH, years ago before the dot-com bust in year 2001. The company went down with the bust. And, I started working in Nashua in the midst of the bust for a company near KMI's address. My company did not went down with the bust and stands to this day.

Wikipedia fiber optics page named KMI one of the marketing companies that over-forecast fiber optic market. All these contributed to the telecom bubble economy during 1995-2000, not to mention out right scandals. After all, fiber is our life artery today. In conclusion, I think the minor irritant is quite entertaining.

There is history you can learn from this book.

J. Curtis Gibson

This is a great book! I bought it for school but the informantion helped me in other things. i would recomend this bok to anyone who is an electroninc freak.