Wireless Communications - Principles and Practice, Second Edition

Theodore S. Rappaport
Prentice Hall PTR
707 pages; $92
ISBN: 0-13-042232-0


The second edition of this book has been written to initiate the newcomer to wireless personal communications, one of the fastest growing fields in the engineering world. 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 general concepts, as well as those specific to current and evolving wireless communication systems and standards. The text continues to evolve and has been updated and modified since its first edition, making it a useful book for practicing engineers, as well as for researchers, and graduate and undergraduate students. The second edition contains dozens of new homework problems and examples, as well as up to the minute technical details of the many emerging wireless standards throughout the world.

Chapter 1 demonstrates the historic evolution of the wireless communication industry and documents the rapid growth of cellular radio. Chapter 2 provides an overview of the major modern wireless communication systems of the 21st century. Chapter 3 covers the fundamental cellular radio concepts and demonstrates the principle of trunking efficiency. Chapter 4 presents radio propagation path loss, link budgets and log-normal shadowing. Chapter 5 covers small-scale propagation effects such as fading, time delay spread and Doppler spread. Chapter 6 provides extensive coverage of the most common analog and digital modulation techniques used in wireless communications and demonstrates tradeoffs that must be made in selecting a method. Channel coding, adaptive equalization and antenna diversity concepts are presented in Chapter 7. Chapter 8 provides an introduction to speech coding. Chapter 9 introduces time, frequency and code division multiple access as well as more recent multiple access techniques such as packet reservation and space division multiple access. Chapter 10 describes networking considerations for wide area wireless communication systems. Chapter 11 unites all the material from the first nine chapters by describing and comparing the major existing, second generation cellular, cordless and personal communication systems throughout the world.

To order this book, contact: Prentice Hall PTR, Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458 (800) 922-0579.

Feedforward Linear Power Amplifiers

Nick Pothecary
Artech House Inc.
204 pages; $99, £73
ISBN: 1-58053-022-2

With the evolution of existing and new standards for mobile communication systems and wireless multimedia services, the quantity and complexity of the signals to be transmitted from a single location is increasing. There is a growing need for amplifiers that amplify all types of signals without adding significant distortion and are capable of operating over a wide bandwidth at potentially high levels of output power.

The general subject of this book is linear amplification for radio frequency transmitters. Specifically, the book is concerned with the use of feedforward as a linearization technique for radio frequency power amplifiers and is primarily aimed at engineers and technicians but is suitable for anyone wishing to learn about linear amplifiers in general, and feedforward in particular.

Chapter 1 begins with an overview of feedforward techniques and includes an introduction to a typical radio system for cellular, PCS, or IMT-2000/UMTS systems. Some concepts specific to operation at radio frequencies are also discussed. In Chapter 2, a mathematical-based approach is used to discuss amplifier input-output characteristics, signal modulation formats, signal envelopes, peak-to-average ratios and statistical analysis. Power amplifiers and system design are discussed in Chapter 3; topics include transistors for RF power amplifiers, amplifier efficiency and class of operation, intermodulation performance and system design issues such as combining RF signals. The concept of a linear amplifier is introduced and practical examples are given for different system configurations. Chapter 4 reviews different linearization techniques including feedback (RF feedback, envelope feedback, Cartesian loop and polar loop feedback), RF synthesis, envelope elimination and restoration, predistortion and feedforward. The discussion on feedforward includes the principles of operation, signal cancellation and loop control; dual-loop feedforward is also described. In Chapter 5, a detailed analysis of feedforward performance is given, with topics such as gain, input/output match, noise figure, broadband signal cancellation, error amplifier performance and system efficiency.

To order this book, contact: Artech House Inc., 685 Canton St., Norwood, MA 02062 (781) 769-9750 ext. 4002; or 46 Gilligham St., London SW1V 1HH, UK +44 (0) 207 596-8750.