Principles of Spread-Spectrum Communication Systems

Originally adopted in military networks as a means of ensuring secure communication when confronted with the threats of jamming and interception, spread-spectrum systems are now the core of commercial applications such as mobile cellular and satellite communication.

This book provides a concise but lucid explanation and derivation of the fundamentals of spread-spectrum communication systems. The level of presentation is suitable for graduate students with a prior graduate-level course in digital communication and for practicing engineers with a solid background in the theory of digital communication. As the title indicates, the author focuses on principles rather than specific current or planned systems. Although the exposition emphasizes theoretical principles, the choice of specific topics is tempered by their practical significance and interest to both researchers and system designers. Throughout the book, learning is facilitated by many new or streamlined derivations of the classical theory. Problems at the end of each chapter are intended to assist readers in consolidating their knowledge and to provide practice in analytical techniques. Principles of Spread-Spectrum Communication Systems is largely self-contained mathematically because of the four appendices, which give detailed derivations of mathematical results used in the main text.

User review
Solid textbook for spread spectrum communications
Spread spectrum techniques were heavily researched in the 1990s, although in the last decade focus has shifted to MIMO and other new developments. However, CDMA still features as the backbone of several 3rd and 4th generation cellular technologies.

This book starts from the basics of direct sequence and frequency-hopping systems (Chapters 2 and 3) and works up to CDMA in chapter 6. Chapters on channel coding and wireless fading channels are included for good measure. The problems at the end of each chapter are solvable, although few in number. It cannot be overlooked that to work your way through this book you need a solid grasp of probability theory and calculus, this is definitely a book for graduate/advanced students.

Overall, a handy reference tool for graduate students and engineers.

User review
good explanations
Another technically in depth book from Springer. This recent addition to their portfolio explains the basis of the huge growth in mobile communications. Mostly in cellphones, but also in other devices like laptops that might communicate via a protocol like WiFi.

The basic idea is explained of using a pseudo-random approach to sharing the spectrum in a given volume of space. Very elegant! Torrieri shows how the military developed it during the long years of the Cold War. But, ironically, nowadays the civilian application market has overtaken the military sector in its usage.

The actual maths can get hairy. The book could actually go into much more of this detail. But the author decided to deprecate the more abstruse workings. Still, the book is certainly not a trivial read. It can be a solid but worthwhile challenge for a grad student to master its contents.