Wireless Crash Course, Second Edition

5 Responses to “Wireless Crash Course, Second Edition”

1. Andrew J. Martin on April 9th, 2010 1:49 am

   This an excellent “crash course” on the wireless industry. Written with a very high level of knowledge without confusing, as is so often the case. Great library addition.
   Rating: 5 / 5

2. M Mactaggart on April 9th, 2010 4:27 am

   This is a very disappointing book. Technical stuff needn’t be turgid or boring although I suspect this is less the author’s fault than the publisher’s, the latter perhaps worriedly taking the view that any hint of personality, lightness, humour or the like equates with lack of gravitas and must be ruthlessly excised and a few diddy questions stuck at the end of chapters for the book to be taken seriously; absolute rubbish of course.

   In fact Bedell often makes good use of analogies and models to explain particular concepts and implementations (for instance on CDMA on p259) and even makes the occasional jokey aside. The book would have been greatly improved by more of this.

   There are, however, too many factual and other errors as in the following examples.

   In 22.5.7 Bedell says, “There is currently a newer version of CDMA under development. Known as wideband CDMA (W-CDMA), sometimes known as `CDMA 2000′”. Really? Well, that solves at a stroke the problems of the two leading South Korean operators wondering which route to emphasise. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU), GSM operators looking to upgrade, and others, may be surprised as well.

   Page 268 has, “… any SIM card works with any GSM handset … [then] the owner must enter their four-digit PIN number. The SIM card cannot be activated without this PIN number …” PIN stands for “Personal Identification Number” so it’s just “PIN”, incidentally, not “PIN number” but, more importantly, the statement is wrong as anyone who happily swaps SIMs between GSM handsets and hasn’t enabled an optional PIN will confirm.

   24.10.2.4 has “Bluetooth[`s range is] much lower than the 3.5 mi of 802.11b.” Well, yes. And so actually is the ordinary open-air range of 802.11b itself, at some three hundred feet or around only 1.5% of the distance claimed.

   Page 234 offers, “With the world shrinking at the rate it is in lieu of the globalization of the world economy ….”; “in lieu of” means “in place of” – presumably Bedell actually means “because of”. And later in the paragraph he uses half a dozen words when a couple would suffice, one of many instances where the book would have benefited greatly by better editing and a reduction of maybe 15% to 20% overall.

   “ie” is not a synonym for “eg”. The former stands for “id est” and means “that is”, the latter for “exempli gratia” and means “for example”. Eg, from page 364, “…locations will range from large enterprises (i.e. office buildings, hospitals, campuses)..”, ie apparently will not include the likes of industrial complexes, airports or anything other than those three groups cited.

   So is this just being picky over things that ultimately don’t matter?

   No, because factual errors (although, as every writer knows, they creep in) have no place in such a text book and this is sloppy editing. And the problem with grammatical or stylistic errors is that, firstly, they obfuscate rather than clarify meaning and so risk confusing the reader and, secondly, their presence raises the suspicion that if the writer or editor has been cavalier with language how cavalier has been the treatment of information which must be taken on trust. It matters greatly in programming whether a coder uses “OR” or “AND” and it’s as important that a writer uses writing tools correctly to convey meaning accurately.

   More generally, the text is far too US-centric for something offering a fast-track route to grasping the essentials of a particular technology area.

   South Korea in particular and Asia in general is well ahead of the rest of the planet in wireless yet there’s no mention of the exciting and innovative developments in those areas. Page 205, for instance, makes some bizarre claims about GPS yet location based systems (LBS) are big in South Korea and Japan and have been for some time.

   In 2001 the gap between Europe and the US in wireless was huge (although it’s certainly narrowing) yet the technology used by 75% of the world, GSM, is barely considered.

   Who, some earnest US factoid collectors perhaps excepted, gives a toss about the dreary recitations of US cellular regulations or the arcane minutae distinguishing PCS and cellular? Far better to have skated briskly over all that and used the space to look in more detail at GSM, at CDMA-IS95 and the future developments of each, at the whole WiFi and WiMAN developments which, granted, were nascent in 2001 but which could still have been covered.

   The book has no glossary and the indexing is poor. Initialisms are fine to use but a reader needs easily to be able to recheck what, for instance, ESN, GSM, CTIA, AMPS, EIR, HLR and so on and so on stand for when he meets them later. This is entirely the publisher’s fault, of course, but such a slapdash contempt for the reader simply isn’t acceptable, particularly in a book for relative beginners.

   I certainly learned a fair bit I didn’t earlier know and to that extent the book was useful. And an updated version would be welcome, particularly if it bravely struck out into the rest of the world where so much more is now happening, lightened up greatly the writing style and were properly edited. But until then, no, sadly it’s a crashed course.
   Rating: 2 / 5

3. E. Smith on April 9th, 2010 5:27 am

   Great book for everything Wireless. Covers past, current and future technologies. If you are a tech nut like me, buy this book and read it cover to cover.
   Rating: 5 / 5

4. W Boudville on April 9th, 2010 8:23 am

   This second edition has prose that clearly explains the concepts in wireless engineering. Without diving deeply into the underlying physics or maths. Bedell explicitly states that he directs the book at a wide audience, including possibly those in the financial industry, who want to make some sense of the various wireless networks.

   He covers all the important types of networks. From those that have been around for decades, to the latest WiFi and WiMax. The latter is especially speculative, but offers great potential for connecting up a wide area.
   Rating: 4 / 5

5. Christina M. Boyle on April 9th, 2010 11:00 am

   This book covers all the main topics as an introduction to the wireless industry. It’s layout is excellent and easy to navigate. Foremost, the book is written in plain english and contains lots of diagrams for those who think visually.

   Last of all, when addressing more complex topics in detail, it contains just enough repetition of the fundamental issues that the repetition enforces what you’ve learned in earlier chapters. Great bookself source for investment analysts trying to get up to speed on the industry quickly.
   Rating: 4 / 5

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