The Book End
Wireless and Personal Communications Systems
Vijay K. Garg and Joseph E. Wilkes Prentice Hall PTR 445 pages; $68
The emerging personal communications service (PCS) will enable users to transfer all forms of information economically between any desired location. This book describes the personal communications network (PCN) and PCS, and discusses the recent history of the underlying technologies and alternative approaches being considered.
Chapter 1 presents a historical background of wireless communications and examines the evolution of wireless technologies in the US and Europe. Chapter 2 discusses first- and second-generation cellular systems and examines the potential problems associated with access technology. Chapter 3 concentrates on narrowband channelized and wideband nonchannelized communications systems, particularly access technologies. Chapter 4 presents propagation and multipath characteristics of radio waves and the concepts of delay spread and intersymbol interference. Chapter 5 details the fundamentals of cellular communications. Chapter 6 deals with digital modulation techniques and the modulation schemes used for cellular and wireless communications.
Chapter 7 discusses antennas and diversity, presenting several methods to combine signals in a multipath environment. Chapter 8 presents analog and digital systems used in the US. Chapter 9 overviews the Global System for Mobile communications and describes the Japanese Digital Cellular system. Chapter 10 discusses wireless and PCS security issues and focuses on privacy and authentication schemes. Chapter 11 details PCS and cellular system management. Chapter 12 presents interworking and interoperability issues and outlines the problems of achieving seamless communications. Chapter 13 discusses the planning and engineering of a radio system. Chapters 14 and 15 overview Cellular Digital Packet Data and other packet-switched data systems used in wireless data messaging services.
This text is especially useful for telecom managers and communications engineers involved in the design of wireless/PCS systems. The book is easily understood by nontechnical readers and serves as a good textbook for senior- and graduate-level students. To order this book, contact: Prentice Hall PTR, PO Box 11073, Des Moines, IA 50336 (800) 947-7700.
Cellular Mobile Systems Engineering
Saleh Faruque Artech House Inc. 292 pages; $69, £60
This book presents a comprehensive overview of cellular communication systems currently in use worldwide. The characteristics and development of cellular radio are described and an in-depth explanation of the latest Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS), and time-division multiple access (TDMA) and code-division multiple access (CDMA) techniques are presented.
Chapter 1 offers a brief history of cellular radio and introduces the North American dual-mode AMPS and TDMA systems, and the North American PCS frequency bands. Salient features of cellular radio also are detailed. Chapter 2 discusses the generic cellular communications system along with cell site configuration and communication protocol. Chapter 3 describes AMPS in detail and discusses TDMA technology. AMPS/TDMA call processing and handoff algorithms are covered, as well as voice and control channel operation and capacity, and co-channel and adjacent-channel interference. Chapter 4 introduces CDMA and spectrum spreading/despreading techniques. Psuedo-random noise, orthogonal and Walsh codes are explained, and process gain, soft and hard capacity, and handoff are described.
Chapter 5 presents the basic concepts of RF propagation, including multipath propagation and propagation modeling. Chapter 6 deals with the art of traffic engineering. The use of the Erlang table is covered along with cell site provisioning. Chapter 7 presents the basic concepts of frequency planning. Omni and sectorization techniques, interference analysis, and capacity evaluation and enhancement techniques are described. Finally, Chapter 8 explains site selection and coverage prediction. Base station provision and design are presented, and antenna engineering and cell site maintenance are described.
This book is an invaluable reference text for engineers designing and developing cellular systems, as well as managers involved in system planning. The text is well illustrated and uses a minimum amount of math to present its subjects in clear and simple terms. To order this book, contact: Artech House Inc., 685 Canton St., Norwood, MA 02062 (617) 769-9750, ext. 4002; or Portland House, Stag Place, London SW1E 5XA, UK +44 (0) 171 973 8077.