In the last three decades, the explosive growth of mobile and wireless communications has radically changed the life of people. Wireless services have migrated from the conventional voice-centric services to data-centric services. The circuit-switched communication network is now being replaced by the all-IP packet-switched network. Mobile communications have also evolved from the first-generation (1G) analog systems to the third-generation (3G) systems now being deployed, and the fourth-generation (4G) systems are now under development and are expected to be available by 2010. The evolution of wireless networking has also taken place rapidly during this period, from low-speed wireless local-area networks (LANs) to broadband wireless LANs, wireless metropolitan area networks (MANs), wireless wide-area networks (WANs), and wireless personal-area networks (PANs). Also, broadband wireless data service has been expanded into broadcasting service, leading to satellite TV broadcasting and wireless regional-area networks (RANs) for digital TV. The data rate has also evolved from the 10 kbits/s voice communications to approximately 1 Gbit/s in the 4G wireless network. In addition, the 4G wireless network will provide ubiquitous communications.

Scope and Purpose

A complete wireless system involves many different areas. However, most existing textbooks on wireless communications focus only on the fundamental principles of wireless communications, while many other areas associated with a whole wireless system, such as digital signal processing, antenna design, microwave and radio frequency (RF) subsystem design, speech coding, video coding, and channel coding, are left to other books.