Wireless Books

This Bert Wilson book was published in 1913, a year after the Titanic went down. Bert and his college chums sign on to a cargo ship for an around-the-world cruise.

Bert is the radio operator...who does little radio operating. That disappointed me as I wanted to get a larger picture, in a fictional sense, of an operators duties in 1913. If you are looking for that sort of information, search for the memoirs of a real "sparks". They can be found on the web.

However, there are thrills galore encountered around the 1913 globe by Bert and his buddies. And, some interesting observations and comments by a couple adults of the ship company, including the ship's surgeon. All from a 1913 point-of-view but still interesting and, some, still valid.

My 5 rating stands in spite of the lack of radio adventure that the title would suggest.

Posted by the author - Benny Bing.

Review by Dr. Norman Abramson, inventor of the first random access protocol - the ALOHA protocol.

There are three key technologies that are important in the design of efficient digital communication networks - communication channel theory, traffic analysis and transformation, and multiple access protocols. The first of these technologies, communication channel theory, dealing with questions of modulation, signal detection and error control coding is the oldest and best developed. Traffic analysis and transformation, dealing with questions of data compression, protocol spoofing and caching is perhaps the least developed although the first major results in this area are almost as old as those of communication channel theory.

The third of these key technologies, multiple access protocols, dealing with the sharing of a common communication channel by a group of users has assumed a greater importance during the past two decades with the advent of shared cellular networks, packet radio networks and satellite networks. The analysis and design of these multiple access protocols in a variety of application areas is the topic of this well organized, comprehensive yet compact book.

Bing defines the scope of the multiple access problem, describes many of the different approaches taken to solve the multiple access problem and analyzes the various approaches to their solution. Both fixed allocation strategies such as FDMA and TDMA as well as random access strategies based on a variety of ALOHA channels are treated. Since important differences in multiple access protocols define competing approaches in the network marketplace at the beginning of the third millennium this volume is well timed to help us evaluate different multiple access choices in network design.

Dr. Norman Abramson ALOHA Networks, San Francisco, July, 2000

This book has been immeasurably useful to me. Like a lot of other people, I had been wanting to install a wireless network in my home, but was scared off by stories I've heard about identity theft, evesdropping, and the like. This reference got me going with confidence..it not only provided a clear, useful assesment of what my particular risks might be, but explained them in a way that showed me the way to enjoy wireless in complete confidence. It is packed with useful info on products and configuration scenarios for keeping secure, and also has basic installation instructions for wireless routers and networks. It's not a thick book, but has everything I need.

This book is not about cell phones, but something far more confusing that those marvels of technology. It's about the services provided by competing providers, and how to choose the one that's best for you. What I like about this pocket-sized book is that it's like having a consultant who understands the ongoing struggle between service providers who are trying to sell you something, and the confused consumer who is trying to make sense of the dizzying array of offering - most of which contain misleading ads and fine print. Most importantly, though, it leads you through the process of selecting a provider and service plan that meets your needs and is best suited to your lifestyle.

Highlights of this book include: simple, straightforward structure and text boxes of pointers and checklists on practically every page, the fact that the author anticipates every conceivable question you may have (and answers many that you wouldn't think to ask), and isolation of the important issues and considerations for selecting the right service plan.

Although this book isn't really about phones, the equipment is covered in a succinct manner, including features, accessories and safety tips. I especially liked the glossary, which defines terms ranging from access fee to W-CDMA. Many of the terms are technical, and many are familiar to anyone who has tried to make sense of their monthly bill (interconnect fees, local calling area, roaming charges).

If you're shopping for a cell phone do yourself a favor and buy this book before you lock yourself into a service provider and plan. It's an investment that will pay big dividends in both sanity and real money savings.

This is a fantastic technical resource for understanding the basic and fundamental concepts of Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD). Wireless Data technologies is a growing field and this book outlines the architecture and protocol to send data over the CDPD infrastructure. No matter how technical you are this book provides background information, specifications and protocol structure. I would highly recommend this to anyone looking at wireless data and CDPD technologies.

It is a great pleasure and honor to write the review for the book by Fette. I am a communication engineer who practiced and taught communication systems for the last 34 years. It is heartening to see the progress in radio communication as this has changed the life style of people at large. From analog to digital to programmable to software defined and now to intelligent (cognitive) radio design we are feeling the future changes as to how people might use the radio technologies in the next 25 years. By studing this book from Fette one can easily guess where radio technologies will be heading. This book, and "Cognitive Radio Architecture" by J. Mitola, have come almost at the same time. While this book provides a general and more technological overview of various aspects of Cognitive radio, the book by J. Mitola gives specific architectural overview of the future radio. I feel both the books are must for those interested in studying and researching in the field of Radio Design both for commercial and military applications. My conclusion is that for Fifth Generation Cellular Radio these are the books to start with. Complimented by the research Articles (e.g. IEEE papaers) one can correctly find the way to radio development. I first congratulate Joseph Mitola for providing the lead in Software Defined/Cognitive radio concepts, and then appreciate the writer Fette for providing an excellent description of Cognitive radio with provision of connection to Software Defoined radio.
I am prticularly interested in Learning Strategies which modify the knowledgebase for making good decision to provide desired QoS in mobile communication systems (environment).
My congratualtions to both J. Mitola and Fette as they have given us the timely information on the subject.
Thank you.

If you want to learn wireless and mobile commerce development this is the best place to start. The 34 lessons cover the absolute basics of "what is ... ?" to actual coding. It uses audio, code examples and more resources than you can possibly get through in a lifetime. Better, the web site that the authors put up to support the book provides even more material.

I like the way that authors cover all technologies with no favoritism. There is something for every developer and platform, including Palm, Pocket PC, WAP, WML/WMLScript, Web Clipping, i-Mode, Bluetooth, XML, J2ME, .NET, Qualcomm BREW. The audio is over 9 hours, and over 10 thousand lines of code is provided to play with and learn from. If you don't have the time or budget for training this is a great way to learn on your own time at a reasonable cost.

Iwouid like to find imformation about the telephone

This theoretically-savvy but nonetheless highly readable book makes a provocative and vital intervention in the field of internet studies. In an engaging romp through topics as diverse as cyberporn, cyberpunk, wecams, globalization, race, TV commercials, TCP/IP, and Schreber's turn-of-the-century delusions, the author argues compellingly that our freedom depends on moving beyond rhetorics of the internet as democratic and/or dangerous. It's a sharp and often stunning analysis that lays bare the ideological stakes of such notions as user-friendliness, protecting children, and techno-Orientalism -- a must-read for anyone interested in media archaeology or cyber-politics.

I like this book because it frames multiuser detection in a linear algebraic setting, emphasising the connections between PIC (parallel interference cancellation) and SIC (successive interference cancellation) and the Jacobi and Gauss-Seidel iterative methods for solving linear systems. So if you know a little numerical linear algebra and are interested in multiuser detection, then you'll like this book. I like it a lot and have learnt a lot from it.

It really seems incredible that other than papers (these authors and also Rasmussen and others) there are very few sources to read which use this setting for the MUD problem. But then, maybe I just see all signal processing problems as problems of applied mathematics and do not appreciate the extra difficulties of implementing sophisticated algorithms in hardware to run in real-time. (I appreciate the difficulties a fair amount, but still like the matrix-vector approach.)

Two thumbs up (and strangely one of the authors is an Aussie, vying with Anderson and Moore (authors of Optimal Filtering) and The Wiggles (see "Toot Toot, Chugga chugga, Big Red Car", one of my daughter's favourites) for the title of World's Greatest Living Aussie).