With an exponential growth in the wireless network space, close to one billion people subscribe to cellular services and close to 200 billion, exchange GSM short messages. Today the wireless industry is the largest industry in the world.

Wireless being the buzz-word, there is a need for such books that address the basic networking principles.

Principles of Wireless Networks offers a comprehensive platform to understand and build any contemporary wireless network, voice or data-from PCs to wireless LANs, and Bluetooth to IMT-2000 3G. The use of extensive practical examples throughout the chapters provide a true systems approach, illuminating the principles, commonalties, key differences, and specific implementation issues associated with virtually every leading wireless system.

The book will be a good reading for software and systems engineers as well as modern telecommunications engineers with electrical engineering or computer science backgrounds.

The book begins with an overview on the wireless networks, principles of air-interface design, and principles of network deployment and operation. System descriptions are divided into two parts, which cover legacy, wide area wireless networks and emerging broadband local and ad-hoc wireless networks. And there is an emphasis on higher-layer communications issues.

The book uses examples specifically intended to illustrate the differences in implementing various systems, ranging from cellular voice telephony to wireless Internet access. It provides a detail discussion of physical layer issues, the implementation of cellular telephone and mobile data networks based on CDMA, TDMA, and GSM. It covers key wideband local access technologies: IEEE 802.11 WLANs, HIPERLAN, connection-based voice-oriented WATM, OFDM, and UWB (UltraWideBand). It also focuses on wireless geolocation and indoor positioning techniques and systems.

It's a good guide that provides insights and techniques needed to begin building any wireless system.

Title: Principles of Wireless Networks - A unified approach
Author: Kaveh Pahlavan and Prashant Krishnamurthy
Publisher: Pearson Education Ltd
Price: 350