This is the Safari online edition of the printed book.

The only easy-to-understand guide to the wireless revolution!

• The easy-to-understand guide to the wireless revolution–fully updated for the latest technologies!

• New and expanded coverage: broadband fixed wireless, WLANs, wireless Internet, Bluetooth, smart antennas, and more

• Updated coverage of CDMA, GPS, LMDS, and WLL systems

• Concepts, terminology, components, and systems–plus new wireless glossary

• Perfect for marketers, investors, tech writers, PR specialists, and other non-engineers!

There's a wireless revolution underway! With The Essential Guide to RF and Wireless, Second Edition, you can understand it, join it, and help drive it–even if you don't have a technical background.

Leading consultant Carl J. Weisman has thoroughly updated this bestseller to reflect new market realities and breakthrough technologies–from wireless 802.11 LANs to broadband fixed wireless, and beyond. Mr. Weisman covers wireless at every level you need to understand: concepts, terminology, building blocks, and above all, how complete wireless systems actually work. Drawing on his extensive experience training sales professionals, he explains the essence of every key wireless/RF technology–clearly, comprehensibly, and with just the right touch of humor.

• Spread spectrum and CDMA: how they work and why they're important

• New! Detailed section on broadband fixed wireless: the new "last mile" solution for residential subscribers

• New! Satellite Internet delivery

• New! Smart antenna and superconducting filter technologies and their implications

• New! Wireless Internet, m-commerce, and Bluetooth

• Expanded! Global Positioning Systems: technologies and applications

• Updated! Preview the future of mobile telephony

• Updated! Wireless LANs and home networking

From its all-new glossary to its extensive collection of charts, diagrams, and photographs, no other wireless/RF book is as accessible or as friendly! Whether you're a sales or marketing pro, customer, investor, tech writer, PR specialist, trade press writer, analyst, planner, or student, here's the up-to-the-minute briefing you've been searching for!

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 15 Ratings

The best so far - 2004-11-19
Reviewer Rating:
I recently started a new job where I need a working understanding of wireless systems, and where I need to be able to comprehend and use the vocabulary of the trade. So, I have read several "Introduction to . . ." books. Weisman's Essential Guide is the best so far. He covers basic concepts, does a good job of explaining the terminology, surveys the different types of systems and the components used to build them, and manages to keep everything readily understandable. If you need to pick up the concepts quickly, pick up this book.

A must have for entry level professionals in the RF industry - 2007-05-07
Reviewer Rating:
This easy reading book will make the complicated RF industry easy to understand.

Excellent Guide for anybody who wants to understand RF & Wireless - 2007-03-15
Reviewer Rating:
This is truly an excellent guide for anyone who wants to understand the basics of RF & Wireless. The most wonderful part about this book are the wonderful analogies and simple explanations of a quite difficult topic. The only issue I have is that this book is due for a 3rd edition - the last chapter is somewhat dated (2001)

Good material, bad writing - 2007-03-03
Reviewer Rating:
I purchased this book after starting a job as an embedded programmer in an RF group. The material in the book provided a good introduction, a basic understanding of the concepts and some useful vocabulary. However, I found the writing style used by the author to be a hinderance to reading the book.

The author liberally includes little comments for the reader enclosed in parantheses. The first few are sort of funny, but the more frequently they occur and they do occur frequently, they start to become annoying. The point of these comments seem to be (a) to poke fun at engineers, (b) to dumb down the material and I suppose (c) entertain the reader.

A few examples: "... the output power at point A is expressed P1 dB (pronounced p wun' d b)..." p. 49 and "Some RF engineers pay big bucks
for a Low Noise Amplifier with a super low Noise Figure. (The rest of us just invest in mutual funds.)" p. 46 These just get in the way of the flow of the text and detract from the book as a whole.

The book is describing a technical subject, why pretend otherwise. Yes it is an introductory text but the people who will read it want to get information from it. They are intelligent enough to draw conclusions from the text, relate the material to their work and remember what they have read. Treating the reader otherwise, as I feel this book does, seriously detracts from its usefulness, by making the reader wade through a lot of unnecessary text.

This book can serve as a good introduction but be warned that you might have to wade through the writing a little bit.

Credibility of author is lessened by errors - 2006-06-28
Reviewer Rating:
The book is a decent high-level overview of RF and wireless. The author clearly states who the intended audience is (i.e. non-engineers) and the material is presented with that level of depth. The thing that troubled me was the numerous errors in the section on CDMA. The spreading and de-spreading examples both have logical errors in the diagrams and the author incorrectly refers (multiple times) to the logical operation as an "exlusive OR," when it is, in fact, an "exclusive NOR." It might sound like I'm being a bit picky, but that's a rather significant error to make and could lead to confusion by the "non-engineering" audience; especially when the author states it "is very easy to understand." Those errors notwithstanding, the one that really prompted me to write this review was in the section on CDMA de-spreading. Moreover, the author states "The top of Figure 7-12 is the same exact spread signal as the one at the bottom of Figure 7-10 (take my word for it)." However, not only are the signals NOT exactly the same, they both have errors. So, the author told the reader to take his word for something and it turns out his word is subject to scrutiny. It just makes me wonder what else is in error at that point. My main point in all of this is that the book is acceptable for someone looking for very basic information on the subject matter, but I'm concerned that if they don't know at least a little basic engineering that they will walk away with some (albeit limited) incorrect information.

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