Software Radio: A Modern Approach to Radio Engineering

Rating:
Summary: yes, some errors, but overall great text
Review: I give this book a 5, despite the errors, because of how well it covered such a broad topic. The reviewer above mentioned the chapter on RF implementation issues, which was very good. The chapter on smart antennas is pretty good also. I think that it is included because the "software" part of a software defined radio is where beam-steering and space-diversity algorithms are implmented. It's not totally out of place and provides for some breadth. All of these VT profs (Reed, Durgin, Rappaport) tend to put out books that facilitate understanding and then, when you are ready for the underlying mathematics, they'll cite you the places to go for that. IMHO, that's a good approach- otherwise, they might as well not write books and just slap together a bunch of papers, bind 'em and call that a rigorous text.

Rating:
Summary: Good book with many errors!
Review: This book is a one-stop source for everything you need to know about Software Radio. So, this is an excellent text-book for a 1-semester course on software radio. Some of the concepts such as analog-to-digital conversion are discussed in detail, although the relevance of a 70 page chapter on smart antennas in a Software Radio book still eludes me. A good introduction to RF implementation issues is provided. There isn't too much Math in this book, which is both good and bad. My only complaint is that there are lot of errors, both conceptual and typographical, in this book and many of these errors are not addressed in the webpage maintained by the author. Otherwise, it is a very good book.