Satellite Communications

Rating:
Summary: Not a bad book but needs significant improvement
Review: I am a lecturer and used this book for my class.

I like the material presented in this book. It contains many examples and discussion on real applications. However the organization of this book is not good. It is just like putting several people's work together without appropriate coordination of the material.

As a second edition of the book, it contains too much errors. You can find many errors in almost each chapter. I have to check carefully before I use their examples, equations and solutions. Otherwise I will get embarassed by letting the students pointing it out in my lecture. It is absolutely a shame.

If you are an engineer who are already familiar with data communications and can tell those errors, this book is a good choice. But if you are a student, I sugget you stay away from it unless it is the textbook chosen by your lecturer.

Rating:
Summary: Not a bad book but needs significant improvement
Review: I read this book as a reference rather than a formal class textbook. As a self-studying student, the first book I bought to study satellite communications was the famouns 'Digital Satellite Communications' ritten by Dr. Tri t. Ha. It is actually a quite good book. However it was just too much for a eginner. Too much mathmatical fomulars and too less literatual explanation for a new concept. It took 8 months to read just one third of the book during my militarry service. Since I have been assigned to a digital satellite earthstation construction project recently, I needed a new book that explains more practically and easilly. This 'Satellite Communications' by Dr. Timothy Pratt and Dr. Charles W. Bostian.

To cover allmost all area of the satellite communications, the overall composition is simillar to other books. At charper 3, 'SPACECRAFT', I could find fine explanation on the satellite beam and coverage. Especially, this helps me with understanding and analyzing the SRS-CDROM data. This is really great for me. Some basic and important concepts like Noise, C/N and G/T are very well descibed in chapter 4, 'SATELLITE LINK DESIGN'. Freankly, most books tend to jump to mathmatical method to explain concepts. The author spared more pages to explain the concept and the physical meaning of the terminology. I know this is a very eficient and simple way to show the existing and potential meaning of terminology. But there are hundreds of good reasons to have this kind of kind book for a slowly understanding engineer like me. :-) At chapter 5 and 6 to explain the modulation, multiplexing and multiple access, there are less fomulas and more tables and graphs. First, I read over those two chapters and went back to Dr. Ha's book above to learn the mathmatical expression. That's how you can expand the concept to individual field applications. The 'Design of Large Antennas' in chapter 9, 'EARTH STATION TECHNOLOGY' was helpful for me, too. It is pretty hard to find propper information about large antennas ahtough you have to face a bunch of confusing terminologies when you visit antenna company web sites like Vertex, RSI (recently merged to Vertex to make VertexRSI), or Datron.

I believe the combination of this ook, 'Satellite Communications' and 'Digital Satellite Communications' will give you almost all knowledge you need from fundamental to practical level in satellite communications engineering field.

Rating:
Summary: Great for a beginner
Review: I read this book as a reference rather than a formal class textbook. As a self-studying student, the first book I bought to study satellite communications was the famouns 'Digital Satellite Communications' ritten by Dr. Tri t. Ha. It is actually a quite good book. However it was just too much for a eginner. Too much mathmatical fomulars and too less literatual explanation for a new concept. It took 8 months to read just one third of the book during my militarry service. Since I have been assigned to a digital satellite earthstation construction project recently, I needed a new book that explains more practically and easilly. This 'Satellite Communications' by Dr. Timothy Pratt and Dr. Charles W. Bostian.

To cover allmost all area of the satellite communications, the overall composition is simillar to other books. At charper 3, 'SPACECRAFT', I could find fine explanation on the satellite beam and coverage. Especially, this helps me with understanding and analyzing the SRS-CDROM data. This is really great for me. Some basic and important concepts like Noise, C/N and G/T are very well descibed in chapter 4, 'SATELLITE LINK DESIGN'. Freankly, most books tend to jump to mathmatical method to explain concepts. The author spared more pages to explain the concept and the physical meaning of the terminology. I know this is a very eficient and simple way to show the existing and potential meaning of terminology. But there are hundreds of good reasons to have this kind of kind book for a slowly understanding engineer like me. :-) At chapter 5 and 6 to explain the modulation, multiplexing and multiple access, there are less fomulas and more tables and graphs. First, I read over those two chapters and went back to Dr. Ha's book above to learn the mathmatical expression. That's how you can expand the concept to individual field applications. The 'Design of Large Antennas' in chapter 9, 'EARTH STATION TECHNOLOGY' was helpful for me, too. It is pretty hard to find propper information about large antennas ahtough you have to face a bunch of confusing terminologies when you visit antenna company web sites like Vertex, RSI (recently merged to Vertex to make VertexRSI), or Datron.

I believe the combination of this ook, 'Satellite Communications' and 'Digital Satellite Communications' will give you almost all knowledge you need from fundamental to practical level in satellite communications engineering field.

Rating:
Summary: This is NOT 'Satellites for Dummies'...
Review: I recently took a Satellite Communications course at the university I attend and this was the textbook. I must say this book is really expensive for what you're likely to get out of it; as the book doesn't really seem to have much of a point. It isn't very well written/edited for a book you would want to learn the subject matter from if you didn't know anything about satellite communications; and it doesn't include enough usable, pertinent data for keeping as a reference book for experienced users. Mostly the book explains concepts in a convoluted and confusing manner, doesn't fully explain them, or adds all sorts of extraneous material not explained in the book into the review sections (which we used as some of our assignments). If you like taking Microsoft computer certification tests, enjoy brain-teasers and riddles, you're already an electrical engineer/astrophysics major with a few years experience, or your last name is "Hawking" you may find this to be a good book. But, if you know little to nothing about satellite communications (orbital mechanics, transmission encoding methods, frequency spectrums, theory of radio transmissions, etc.) my suggestion is look for another book on the subject and get this one from your local library. If you MUST buy this book like I did, do yourself a favor by getting it 'Used' and save yourself some money. By the way, I was told this book is no longer used for this course for some of these same reasons.

Rating:
Summary: This is NOT 'Satellites for Dummies'...
Review: I recently took a Satellite Communications course at the university I attend and this was the textbook. I must say this book is really expensive for what you're likely to get out of it; as the book doesn't really seem to have much of a point. It isn't very well written/edited for a book you would want to learn the subject matter from if you didn't know anything about satellite communications; and it doesn't include enough usable, pertinent data for keeping as a reference book for experienced users. Mostly the book explains concepts in a convoluted and confusing manner, doesn't fully explain them, or adds all sorts of extraneous material not explained in the book into the review sections (which we used as some of our assignments). If you like taking Microsoft computer certification tests, enjoy brain-teasers and riddles, you're already an electrical engineer/astrophysics major with a few years experience, or your last name is "Hawking" you may find this to be a good book. But, if you know little to nothing about satellite communications (orbital mechanics, transmission encoding methods, frequency spectrums, theory of radio transmissions, etc.) my suggestion is look for another book on the subject and get this one from your local library. If you MUST buy this book like I did, do yourself a favor by getting it 'Used' and save yourself some money. By the way, I was told this book is no longer used for this course for some of these same reasons.