Customer Reviews

Wireless Communications: Principles and Practice (2nd Edition)

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

 

 

As a lecturer in Mobile Telecommunications I was concerned that this book is light on detail in some places, and authoritatively wrong in others. For example, the author makes basic errors in his description of the GSM logical architecture (particularly with respect to the network databases) and he does not describe the current HR and EFR GSM voice codecs; the section on IS-95 CDMA does not describe soft handoff or cell identification in detail and has not been updated to describe IS-95A. His derivation of Erlang B is also missing a number of key steps. These factors make this textbook unrecommendable for my students. A THOROUGH revision is in order for the next edition.

If I had not seen the Gorden Stuber book I would have given this book only 1 star. However in comparison, it does deserve at least 2.

This book has all the stuff you would want in a wireless text book. It covers fading, Rayleigh, Rician, GSM, AMPS etc. My major complaint with the book is THERE ARE NO EXAMPLES. Per chapter there are probably 3 or 4 examples, but none of them are really challenging.

For instance in the fading chapter, the examples are on coherence time only. How about a couple examples that actually use the fading PDF's/CDF's. We spend so much time "discussing" the distributions, maybe it is time we actually use the distributions?

Compared to "Principles of Mobile Communication" the book is marginally better. For one it is not as heavy on the math, and it does a better job explaining pretty well everything.

However.. I feel I learned far more from Shankar's wireless book in undergrad.

I recommend this book for anyone pursuing a Certification like CWNA, CWNP or other wireless certifications. The technical concepts which are at the core of design, implementation, research, and invention of wireless communication systems are presented in an order that is conducive to understanding the general concepts, as well as those specific to current and evolving wireless communication systems and standards.
The Author has done a great job of explaining Radio wave propagation which has historically been the most difficult problem to analyze and design for, since unlike a wired communication system which has a constant, stationary transmission channel (i.e., a wired path), radio channels are random and undergo shadowing and multipath fading, particularly when one of the terminals is in motion. I particularly liked the chapter on modeling spatial-temporal channels, which is vital for the development of smart antennas and position location systems.
The appendices contain hundreds of mathematical formulas and identities for general engineering work.
The compilation of the major wireless standards makes this book particularly useful as a single source of information for a wide range of wireless systems that are commercially deployed today.
I gave this book 4 stars as I feel that the problems included in the book should have the answers as well.
Niloufer Tamboly, CISSP

this book is not good for the beginner in wireless communication. I have to use this textbook, because it's the requirement form my instructor.

the author didn't organize this book as well as he should. All equations are not well explained...Sometime the students need to guess where this variable stands for or what parameter's meaning is. He wrote like the literature or drama.....no space for equation's explanation...all of them are in the same paragrah.

i really don't recommend this textbook and i still don't understand why my instructor uses this text

I am a university student and recently took a course in which the required readings were taken from this text. I, along with many of my peers, found this book to be very useful, as well as well organized and easy to follow. It presented many key ideas clearly and was an excellent introduction to the topic of wireless communications. While some of the details may have been missing, the general overview provided was ideal for a first course in this area as it is difficult to touch on many of the details while still giving a solid introduction in a single term.
It was definitely one of my favourite text books during my 4-year undergraduate program.

Book received in the condition I expected, brand new. It was the edition as shown and arrived in time for my class.

This is very dry reading that overloads you with acronyms...I am hoping that I can get into this as I need a refresher before I start working on LTE.

It is an excellent book. You can find anything about wireless communications easily and clearly. I would recommend it to anyone interested in this field.

This text is by far the most comprehensive and useful for explaining all facets of wireless communications. I had this text for an entry graduate class, and found the examples, writing style, and organization to be first rate. The description of 3G systems and WLANs in Chapter 2 was very useful and helped when I later had to read the standards for employment. This text will continue to get good use on my bookshelf. It also has a very thorough index and appendices with many tables, formulas, explanations, and useful engineering matter that I seldom have ever found under one cover before.
Great for students and practicing wireless engineers

This has many typos, which can be frustrating in following the context. And I found out that the typos are different to other 2nd editions. Little bit disappointing.