Description

For courses in Electronic Communications Technology (one or two-semester sequence), Microwave Communications, Wireless Communications, Communications Maintenance Technology, and Introduction to Telecommunications. 

Electronic Communications: A Systems Approach provides a comprehensive overview of wireless, wired, analog, and digital electronic communications technologies at the systems level. The authors’ carefully crafted narrative structure helps readers put the many facts and concepts encountered in the study of communications technologies into a larger, coherent whole. Topics covered include modulation, communications circuits, transmitters and receivers, digital communications techniques (including digital modulation and demodulation), telephone and wired computer networks, wireless communications systems (both short range and wide area), transmission lines, wave propagation, antennas, waveguides and radar, and fiber-optic systems.  The math analysis strikes a middle ground between the calculus-intensive communications texts intended for four-year BSEE programs and the math-avoidance path followed by some texts intended for two-year programs.

Features

Chapter pedagogy helps students identify and learn key concepts.

• Each chapter includes a summary, review questions, and problems that review key concepts and help students see the 'big picture.'  

The emphasis on narrative structure, particularly in fundamentals chapters, offers a cohesive introduction to key concepts.

• Allows students to make connections between concepts at a conceptual level rather than memorizing a large number of seemingly unrelated facts. 

Reviews concepts covered in basic electronics courses, including nature of a sine wave, reactance and resonance, and classes of amplification.

• Acknowledges that there may be a significant lapse in time between the electronics fundamentals courses and the communications course.
• Gives instructors the opportunity to review some basics while placing the concepts in context, where their importance will become more apparent. 

Includes topics and end-of-chapter questions that help students prepare for the FCC General Radiotelephone Operator License exam.

• The FCC GROL is still valued in industry; many employers use it as a resume filter to screen applicants, and in some industries (particularly avionics) possession of the GROL is mandatory. 

Covers the latest in digital communications and digital signal processing.

• Most up-to-date treatment of enabling technologies behind latest-generation wireless systems, including 3G and 4G/LTE.
• Addresses the following topics: digital modulation, digital signal processing, finite-impulse response filters, spread spectrum, orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing, multiple-input/multiple-output configurations. 

Discusses topics not found in other communications texts intended for 2-year programs.

• Covers the following topics: SINAD (sensitivity) testing, squelch system operation, finite-impulse response filters and digital signal processing, the complex exponential and analytic signals, DSP modulation/demodulation, spread-spectrum techniques, wireless networks including 802.11n, Bluetooth and ZigBee, enhanced coverage of GSM and CDMA voice networks, coverage of two-way and trunked radio systems, software-defined radio, cavity filters/duplexers/combiners, impedance matching and network analysis (including S parameters), Maxwell's equations, and system link-budgeting and path-loss calculatiosns. 

Introduction to the concept of analytic frequency and the complex exponential.

• Describes the math behind many of the digital-signal processing implementations of digital modulation and demodulation that are now becoming mainstream implementations.

Table of Contents

• 1. Fundamental Communications Concepts
• 2. Amplitude Modulation
• 3. Angle Modulation
• 4. Communications Circuits
• 5. Transmitters
• 6. Receivers
• 7. Digital Communications Techniques
• 8. Digital Modulation and Demodulation
• 9. Telephone Networks
• 10. Wireless Communications Systems
• 11. Computer Communication and the Internet
• 12. Transmission Lines
• 13. Wave Propagation
• 14. Antennas
• 15. Waveguides and Radar
• 16. Fiber Optics
• Appendix A: FCC General Radiotelephone Operator License (GROL) Requirements