Satellite Books

Many space photography books have been published that show a wide variety of geological features, ocean currents, cloud structures and human impact on the land, such as Orbit by Jay Apt and the Home Planet by Kevin Kelly. However, due to the restrictions of orbital mechanics associated with Space Shuttle Flights as well as all other US manned space flight, most of the pictures taken by these crews, cover the latitudes between North 45 degrees and South 45 degrees thereby excluding a fair portion of the Earth's landmasses. In this book, the author, using the remote sensing Landsat satellites, shows the reader a variety of Canadian landscapes using quality color photography. I believe that this is the only book to date that deals exclusively with space photography of Canada.

After a brief introduction describing Canada's use of remote sensing, the book presents 48 full-page color pictures highlighting Canadian landforms, farmlands and cities, with accompanying text and its location on a map of Canada. Some typical photographs include: glaciers and glaciated land, impact craters, mountains, farmland, cities, the Great Lakes and the coastal shorelines. I personally found the pictures of the impact craters and the glaciers quite interesting and very impressive. While I'm sure that the author could have presented many more pictures of his country than he did, he has given the reader an excellent overview of the diversity of landscapes in his country and I feel like visiting right now to see first hand what I saw in the book.

If you're tired of all the space photography books that cover primarily the United States, you should be pleasantly surprised with this book that provides some unique remote sensing observations of our neighbor to the north.

I am a network engineer for a wireless company and I would like to note that Mr. Russell's books are very outstanding and helpful. It gave me a very good understanding regarding telecommunications protocols and among other things. It had helped with me my job funtions, and enable me to share these knowledge to my fellow engineers.

This book is perfect for someone without an engineering or science background who needs to understand the functioning of communications satellites.
Though written over 20 years ago, it is still relevant even with the enormous advances in technology since.
It would be useful for this book to be updated using more recent examples. Yet even in its original form the reader will have a non-professional working knowledge of the subject after reading this work.

"Descriptions include graphic representations, block diagrams of communication subsystems, and satellite details. More than 300 line drawings, schematics, flowcharts and maps depicting satellite footprints dot this major work.... This book is not light reading. It is intended to document the explosive growth from experimental satellites to today's multitude of spacecraft. The author has nearly three decades of experience in communications satellite design and development. An impressive bibliography lists more than 3,000 sources, and a glossary and helpful index round out this resource book."
--Space News

This book is a fantastic primer and reference guide for satellite engineers. It clearly presents concepts w/ the underlying equations for every aspect of satellite communications. It is a must for any engineer working in the satellite industry.

Constellation Shaping Nonlinear Precoding and Trellis Coding for Voiceband Telephone Channel Modems: With Emphasis on Itu t Recommendation V 34 (Kluwer International Series in Engineering and Computer Science, 673)
by Steven A. Tretter

I teach a GED course and I find all the books in this series to be a valuable resource to anyone trying to obtain their GED. All of these books have excellent lessons and sample tests. These books are highly recommended.

This is probably one of the best methods I've ever used to get ready for any test. It's a very in depth guide on getting ready for the 4th test of the GED. It has a pre-test, post-test and a full length practice test to help you decide if you're ready for the GED. If you need to study, this is the best way to go. The other books that go with this one are awesome too.

From the title alone you would think that the book is simply for the new communications advancing around the world, however the first few chapters provide the reader with almost everything to get started in microwaves and satellite TV in general.

Cleverly taking the best from his previous publications, Frank Baylin has reworked the scripts and added valuable contributions from those in the industry, bringing what would have been just another everyday guide, into a comprehensive encyclopedia of yesterdays and tomorrows technology.

For those just starting, those that wish to continue to make a living from TV in the New Age, or those that simply want to have a fall back book with formulae and hints, this book is the one to have.

As its now late 2001, - four years since the first edition release - in what is the fastest changing industry on the planet, the way Digital Satellite TV has been put together shows that common sense and a good knowledge of 'old school' practicalities are still the best foundations on which to build on.

Buy the book !

This is a very well written book on digital TV for the intermediate student or reader. It steers a middle course between the more technical or professional level TV books, such as the well known Whitaker volume published by McGraw Hill, and the more basic books such as The Dummies guides. For me, it was just right since the more advanced books were a bit too hard for me yet, but the easier books were too basic.

The book is especially strong on the digital compression issues, and the chapter on middleware and operating systems is really exceptional, a subject that often isn't addressed as completely in some other volumes. The second to the last chapter provides a nice summary of the main features and differences between satellite, terrestrial broadcast, and cable digital TV.

It's still a fairly technical book, though, and you should already have some basic knowledge of what digital TV is and how the three main types, which are terrestrial, satellite, and cable-based digital TV, differ from each other. Obviously, there are many similarities, but they differ most in the use of different signal modulation techniques and the nature and extent of the error correction in order to best make use of the available bandwidth.

For example, obviously satellite and broadcast TV are most susceptible to multipath interference and other types of noise, hence the signal to noise ratio of these technologies is lower than cable. Cable has a much better signal (25 to 30 db instead of perhaps 6 db), and yet suffers from internal echoes due to impedance mismatches along the long segments of cable. This implies that broadcast and satellite TV need more robust and extensive error correction, which is true. However, satellite may reach areas too remote for typical cable.

The book also has several chapters dealing with the more technical aspects of compression, error correction, etc., for those who are interested. Overall, an excellent brief book (less than 300 pages), and it's also nicely bound on good quality paper in signatures so that the binding will hold up better over time and the pages won't fall out.