This is a very good text and regarded as one of the greats for a reason, but it glosses over a lot of lower concepts (like OFDM, which if I recall occupies only a single short chapter) and focuses very heavily on MIMO. Proakis and Salehi ("Digital Communications") and Goldsmith ("Wireless Communications") cover some of the "lower level" concepts like OFDM pretty well in depth from a theory standpoint. Goldsmith is a particularly good middle ground book. A highly underrated book is also Andreas Schwarzinger's "Digital Signal Processing in Modern Communication Systems", which covers how modems for these systems are actually implemented in real life and is quite approachable from an engineering standpoint.
I have a HAM level understanding of wireless communication and want to expand it. This book and the ones you listed seem like they'll go over my head. Any recommendations on an "101" style text book?
The other recommendations you're getting are college-level texts. If McDermott's book suits your initial needs, Rick Lyons' and/or Steven W. Smith's DSP books would be a good next step.
Thank you for your valuable comment! As an autodidact I do buy books on various fields that interest me and I'm always looking for comments such as yours that can give me more information about the main texts in that field and what they cover well or what another book covers better. So this is very helpful!
Thanks for the last rec, it looks like exactly what I need. As a self learner I still like some theory but a good mix with practical and building intuition. Like 'The art of electronics'. This looks to be a similar style
Early versions had a fairly fatal flaw. They responded to bad reception (reception but failure of checksum etc due to interference) by 'downshifting' e.g. reducing their transmission rate from 10Mbit to lower rates.
This seems rational, but in practice it usually shifted all the way to the minimum (1Mbps!) and got no relief. In fact, packets were 10 to 100 times 'longer' in airtime, congesting the channel so nobody got anything through.
Why did they get no relief? Because frequently the noise was bursty e.g. microwave oven pulse or auto spark plug noise. Going slower meant larger (longer to transmit) packets, which provided a 'bigger target' for the noise to poke a hole in.
A more useful response was to try the fastest rate, a smaller packet which got hit with fewer 'darts' impacting any particular packet.
This is a very good text and regarded as one of the greats for a reason, but it glosses over a lot of lower concepts (like OFDM, which if I recall occupies only a single short chapter) and focuses very heavily on MIMO. Proakis and Salehi ("Digital Communications") and Goldsmith ("Wireless Communications") cover some of the "lower level" concepts like OFDM pretty well in depth from a theory standpoint. Goldsmith is a particularly good middle ground book. A highly underrated book is also Andreas Schwarzinger's "Digital Signal Processing in Modern Communication Systems", which covers how modems for these systems are actually implemented in real life and is quite approachable from an engineering standpoint.
I have a HAM level understanding of wireless communication and want to expand it. This book and the ones you listed seem like they'll go over my head. Any recommendations on an "101" style text book?
Try Tom McDermott's book first: https://web.tapr.org/tapr_history/WDC.DAT.N5EG.pdf -- it's not brand-new, but not much of this stuff really is.
I don't see it for sale anymore but the text is at https://dn760103.eu.archive.org/0/items/fea_Wireless_Digital... . No word on the fate of the "free disk," though.
The other recommendations you're getting are college-level texts. If McDermott's book suits your initial needs, Rick Lyons' and/or Steven W. Smith's DSP books would be a good next step.
Lesson 1: HAM is not an acronym. :)
We used Proakis in grad school. For undergrad we used:
Communication Systems by Simon Haykin
I second all suggestions here. I'd also suggest "Software Receiver Design" by Johnson et al.
Thank you for your valuable comment! As an autodidact I do buy books on various fields that interest me and I'm always looking for comments such as yours that can give me more information about the main texts in that field and what they cover well or what another book covers better. So this is very helpful!
Thanks for the last rec, it looks like exactly what I need. As a self learner I still like some theory but a good mix with practical and building intuition. Like 'The art of electronics'. This looks to be a similar style
Thank you.
Lots of innovation in 802.11 and it's ilk.
Early versions had a fairly fatal flaw. They responded to bad reception (reception but failure of checksum etc due to interference) by 'downshifting' e.g. reducing their transmission rate from 10Mbit to lower rates.
This seems rational, but in practice it usually shifted all the way to the minimum (1Mbps!) and got no relief. In fact, packets were 10 to 100 times 'longer' in airtime, congesting the channel so nobody got anything through.
Why did they get no relief? Because frequently the noise was bursty e.g. microwave oven pulse or auto spark plug noise. Going slower meant larger (longer to transmit) packets, which provided a 'bigger target' for the noise to poke a hole in.
A more useful response was to try the fastest rate, a smaller packet which got hit with fewer 'darts' impacting any particular packet.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.10001
How relevant is this in 2026?
Very much. This text is about fundamentals, not implementations.
Is there a counter-part that focuses on implementations and practical exercises for hackers (in the MIT sense of the word)?
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