Schaum's Outline of Analog and Digital Communication

Rating:
Summary: Truly excellent book for communication engineering students
Review: Let me start by saying this book WILL NOT TEACH YOU Analog and Digital communication.

Like most Schaum's books it quickly scans over what you need to know.

That being said, this is truly an amazing book. I have used this book so often that I need to buy it again (newsprint pages).

There are so many example problems on AM/FM/PM, pulse shaping that you just have to understand it.

However the REAL POWER OF THIS BOOK starts at chapter 5. The entire chapter reviews basic Probability and Random Variables and gives around 50 worked out examples.

Chapter 6 is on Random Signals and Noise. Another excellent excellent EXCELLENT chapter. It covers (AUTO)CORRELATION, (AUTO)COVARIANCE, time averages, ensemble averages, Wide and Strict Sense Stationary, Power Spectral Densities from taking the Fourier transform of your autocorrelation function as well as 35 fully worked out problems.

Finally chapter 7 is on Performance in the presence of noise which very nicely wraps up the last 2 chapters with the first 4. AWGN channels with AM/FM/PM systems as well as optimum receivers and there are 32 worked out problems.

Chapter 8 is on information coding and covers everything from source, entropy, channel and error control coding.

In a nutshell this book fills in the blanks of 6 graduate level texts I have on the above subjects.

I highly recommend this book to any communication engineer, but don't forget that Schaum's books do not teach you the material, they simply apply it.

Rating:
Summary: review
Review: Like most Schaums, this provides most of the condensed material that necessary for anything that can be calculated.

Rating:
Summary: Great for reference
Review: The Shaum's series are great for any student to use as additional study aids and for reference. I used this mostly for reference during some other classes as well. (Comunications thoery, Signal proceesing theory, etc) Don't expect it to teach you though. you must ber vaguely familiar with the terminology and what to look for.