| I have noticed over my 20-year career in wireless engineering that the most effective technicians and engineers are those who understood the basic fundamentals of radio frequency engineering. Too often, technicians understand how to follow the test procedures or troubleshooting guidelines to make the RF measurements, but does not understand what they are measuring and why. It is important to understand the answers to the what and why questions, since often the unexpected happens on site and adjustments have to made on the fly. This is impossible when the technician does not have the proper training or understanding of the fundamentals.
Due to the current state of the telecommunications industry, it is not always possible to get the proper training since budgets are tight. The responsibility often falls on individuals to make up for this lack of training on their own in order to meet the requirements of their jobs. Furthermore, field engineers and technicians find it frustrating that many of the available wireless textbooks are very academic with minimum hands-on experience. I feel that this book offers the opportunity to gain much of the basic technical knowledge necessary to have a long and successful career in the wireless telecommunications field.
This updated edition lays the foundation of wireless engineering by covering the first generation analog cellular systems (AMPS) and the second generation digital cellular systems (GSM, TDMA, and CDMA) before moving into the new 2.5G (GPRS/EDGE and CDMA2000 1X) and third generation or 3G wireless technologies (CDMA2000, 1xEV-DO, and UMTS) that deliver increased voice capacity and/or high-speed packet data services. |