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(More customer reviews)What is there to like in "Physical Principles of Wireless Communications"? A lot!
The preface paints the landscape: "Wireless communications is based on the launching, propagation, and detection of electromagnetic waves usually at radio or microwave frequencies." By the end of the book, you'll have covered short-range, medium range and long-range forms of wireless communication. You'll start with the physical principles, gain insight into the supporting theory and equations, and learn examples of how this works in real world applications.
The author begins with a brief but fascinating tour of the history with "An Introduction to Modern Wireless Communications." The chapter is beautifully written and nicely laid out with photos and graphics. The author includes stories of some of the great early physicists and their experiments that led to modern day technology. The breakthroughs of people like Marconi are brought to life in a very memorable way. (Marconi's entrepreneurial inventions enabled shore to ship communications and led to the unanticipated discovery of the ionosphere.) Fascinating background ....
Next, Dr. Granatstein winds his way through a noisy century of scientific and engineering discoveries in radio. You quickly catch up with today's wireless technologies in cell phones, local area networks and satellite communication systems all have grown out of these fundamental principles.
Chapters 3 and 4 present mutually-reinforcing chapters on "Antennas" and "Antenna Arrays". I always wondered how antennas worked - this explains it well. Chapter 5, "Radio Frequency (RF) Wave Propagation" helps you think about propagation challenges - "reflection, refraction, absorption, multipath phase interference and diffraction." These are real world problems for deployments.
By the time you reach chapter 7, you'll start to realize the level of math required to master this subject - this chapter is packed with all sorts of equations.
This book explains the basics of how signals are created, transmitted, and received. But it rapidly accelerates into more advanced territory. The equations of electromagnetic radiation will challenge even the most determined. On the other hand, the figures and graphics are crystal clear and easily accessible to even the most casual reader.
In addition to being full of theory, this book is well populated with practical descriptions of how theory plays out in practice. Simple diagrams convey common material. Figures in chapter 5 depict the basic geometries of waves propagation. Graphics in chapter 6 nicely and simply describe the operation of wireless microwave bridges.
The author is a true expert on his subject. He has a Ph.D in electrical engineering and held positions at Bell Labs, the Naval Research Lab, and conducted decades of research and teaching in a university setting. He has studied, researched, practiced, taught, and now written about the subject. This is as authoritative as an author can be.
The text itself emerged from teaching material to senior EE students, grad students, and engineers working in communication companies. In less than 250 pages of text, the author conveys an important body of knowledge that has been collected over roughly the past 150 years. This book could easily be used in a classroom setting, as a main text or supplemental reading.
So many wireless gadgets are in use today that they are shaping our culture as well as our future technology pathways. "Physical Principles of Wireless Communications" provides a strong foundation for understanding the drivers and implications. It ranks as the best book I've seen (by far) on the physics of wireless communications.
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