Highly regarded for more than a decade as both a teaching text and professional tutorial, this classic guide to satellite communications has been revised, updated, and expanded to cover global wireless applications, digital television, and Internet access via satellite.

In-depth, textbook-style coverage combined with an intuitive, low-math approach makes this book particularly appealing to the wireless and networking markets
New to this edition: Global wireless services, including 3G; Antenna Options, Error Coding

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 3 reviews)

Excellent introduction

This is an excellent introduction to the field that's pitched at the undergraduate engineering level. It's clearly and concisely written and the writing overall is much better than what I'm used to finding for most engineering texts. It uses almost no calculus, actually, but there's a fair amount of trigonometry, which shouldn't be a problem for most people who will be reading this book. Its strength is in the breadth of coverage; some of the topics, such as entire antenna design, or digital signal theory, are huge areas just by themselves that you will need other books for if you need more depth there. By the way, the Schaum's Outline on Digital Signal Processing is outstanding if you're looking to get a leg up there. It's more concise, better written, and explains concepts better than the vast majority of the texts out there.

It's also important to know the basics about radio and wireless communication before reading this book, otherwise it will just be too difficult. So you should already know something about subjects such as analog and digital signals, amplitude and frequency modulation, basic filter concepts such as low and high pass filters, amplifiers, coders and decoders, frequency detectors, antenna principles, and so on, before reading this book. There's also a fair amount of microwave information in the book, but this is easier to pick up if you already have some idea about wireless radio communication.

I agree with the other writer that one weakness of the book is it lacks coverage of the more recent developments such as current IP topologie, satellite Internet IP services like Hughes and BGAN, or discussion of current DVB-S or S2 technology, digital satellite services that are used all over the world now since 1995. However, I don't fault the book too much for that as things change so quickly now i this field that books on communications are partly outdated by the time they're published. But overall it's a very good introductory text and one that I learned a lot from. By the way, in recent weeks I've discovered that Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, has hundreds of articles on satellite and other communications topics, including some of the ones that aren't discussed here such as DVB-S and DVB-S2, and you can use that site to bone up on them a bit.
January 17, 2008

Good Basic Overview, Not Current with Today's IP Technology

I expected the 2006 fourth edition to be more up to date with today's IP satellite technology. While the networking chapter discusses IP, it is in the contex of ATM and TDM technology with little or no information on current IP topologies and satellite Internet IP services like Hughes and BGAN among others. Additionally, there is no mention of current DVB-S or S2 technology which is widely deployed today. Roddy fails to make note of the broadcasting migration to IP with most of the broadcasting information somewhat dated.
May 29, 2007

nice breadth that covers this field

For the undergraduate or graduate student in engineering, this is a very understandable text on the basic principles of using satellites to communicate. Many topics in the field are covered. Like a comprehensive listing of existing geostationary satellites, and their orbital assignments.

For those of you who need a revision of Keplerian mechanics, Roddy supplies Chapter 2. Or if you need a quick cram on the propagation of radio waves, there is Chapter 4. And there is the all-important subject of antenna design. Whether this be for an antenna on the satellite or here on Earth.

Given that communications are of interest, various analog and digital encoding schemes are bruited. By now very well understood. Which leads into a discussion of signal and noise interference on a channel.

For all of the topics, like antenna design, or communications theory, there are certainly more indepth books. But the breadth here is a key utility of this book.
February 14, 2006

SIMILAR PRODUCTS

Satellite Communications Systems: Systems, Techniques and Technology
by Gérard Maral, Michel Bousquet

Satellite Technology: Principles and Applications
by Anil Kumar Maini, Varsha Agrawal

ITU Handbook on Satellite Communications
by International Telecommunications Union, International Telecommunications Union

VSAT Networks
by Gérard Maral

Satellite Networking: Principles and Protocols
by Zhili Sun