Telecommunication

Breakdown
Concepts of Communication
Transmitted via
Software-Defined Radio

C. Richard Johnson Jr. William A. Sethares

TELECOMMUNICATION
BREAKDOWN
or How I Learned to Stop Worrying
and Love the Digital Radio

C. Richard Johnson, Jr.

School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Cornell University
johnson@ece.cornell.edu
and

William A. Sethares
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Wisconsin - Madison
sethares@ece.wisc.edu

February 2003
c

2003
Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS MATERIAL MAY BE REPRODUCED, IN
ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS, WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING
FROM THE PUBLISHER AND IS PROTECTED UNDER ALL COPYRIGHT
LAWS AS THEY CURRENTLY EXIST.
Authors Note on Title: Having seen Dread Zeppelin live in 1999, we realize we
need make no apologies to Led Zeppelin for abusing their songs title. Furthermore, we selected our working title before the industry went and did it. Our
editor wanted a subtitle mentioning the books actual content.

TelecommunicationBreakdown

Concepts of Communication Transmitted via Software-Defined Radio

C. Richard Johnson Jr., Cornell University
William A. Sethares, University of Wisconsin
The wireless telegraph is not difficult to understand. The ordinary
telegraph is like a very long cat. You pull the tail in New York and it
meows in Los Angeles. The wireless is the same, only without the cat.

A. Einstein

The fundamental principles of telecommunications have remained much the same

since Shannons time. What has changed, and is continuing to change, is how those
principles are deployed in technology. One of the major ongoing changes is the
shift from hardware to software. Telecommunication Breakdown: Concepts of
Communication Transmitted via Software-Defined Radio reflects this trend by
focusing on the design of a digital software-defined radio.
Telecommunication Breakdown: Concepts of Communication Transmitted via
Software-Defined Radio helps the reader build a complete digital radio that includes
each part of a typical digital communication system. Chapter by chapter, the reader
creates a MATLAB realization of the various pieces of the system, exploring the key
ideas along the way. In the final chapter, the reader puts it all together by building
a complete receiver. This is accomplished using only knowledge of calculus, Fourier
transforms, and MATLAB.

Key benefits:
a hands-on approach that provides the reader with a sense of continuity and
motivation for exploring communication system concepts
provides invaluable preparation for industry, where software-defined digital radio
is increasingly important
CD-ROM extras include lesson PDFs; final projects; received signals for
assignments and projects; all MATLAB code presented in the text; a bonus
chapter on QAM Radio

Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458

www.prenhall.com