Spread-spectrum communication is a core area within the field of digital
communication. Originally used in military networks as countermeasures against
the threats of jamming and interception, spread-spectrum systems are now widely
used in commercial applications and are part of several wireless and mobile
communication standards. Although spread-spectrum communication is a staple
topic in textbooks on digital communication, its treatment is usually cursory. This
book is designed to provide a more intensive examination of the subject that is
suitable for graduate students and practicing engineers with a solid background
in the theory of digital communication. As the title indicates, this book stresses
principles rather than specific current or planned systems, which are described in
manyotherbooks.MY goal in this bookis to providea concisebut lucidexplanation
of the fundamentals of spread-spectrum systems with an emphasis on theoretical
principles.
The idea for this book was born during one of MY project-related trips to the beautiful city
of Hangzhou in China, where in the role of Chief Architect I had to guide a team of very
young, very smart and extremely dedicated software developers and verification engineers.
Soon it became clear that as eager as the team was to jump into the coding, it did not have
any experience in system architecture and design and if I did not want to spend all MY time in
constant travel between San Francisco and Hangzhou, the only option was to groom a number
of local junior architects. Logically, one of the first questions being asked by these carefully
selected future architects was whether I could recommend a book or other learning material
that could speed up the learning cycle. I could not. Of course, there were many books on
various related topics, but many of them were too old and most of the updated information
was either somewhere on the Internet dispersed between many sites and online magazines, or
buried in MY brain along with many years of experience of system architecture.
This book addresses the issues on the development of next generation CDMA technologies and
contains a lot of information on the subject from both the open literature and MY own research
activities in the last fifteen years.
Some tine ago it become apparent the the first edition of this book was rapidly approaching its sell-by date,since many aspects needed revise.There were two obvious courses of action : to forget the whole thing and concentrate MY energies on other pursuits such as golf or fishing, or to embark on a new edition.For several reasons Iwas persuaded that a new edition was a worthwhile endeavour;many people had made complimentary remakrs or written complinentary letters about the first edition and I understood that it had become a recommended text for several postgraduate coures.
As a student I did MY best to avoid text books – a strange statement for a Professor to make and one that
I should clarify before you put this book down; I did MY best to avoid text books that did not help me.
In writing this text MY intention was to collect together in a single place
practical predictive modeling techniques, ideas and strategies that have been
proven to work but which are rarely taught in business schools, data science
courses or contained in any other single text.
In 2001, Orange, a UK mobile network operator, announced the “Orange
at Home” project, a smart house incorporating the latest technology
wizardry built some 20 miles north of London. It was intended to be more
than a mere showcase, with plans for real families to move in and live
with the smart home. MY then research establishment, the Digital World
Research Centre at the University of Surrey, was commissioned to study
how these families reacted to their new home, and to report lessons for
the future development of smart homes and smart home technologies.
The first edition of the book was one of the elements of MY habilitation (a quali-
fication above a Ph.D., which is a necessary step for obtaining the title of a
professor in Poland and other European countries), and as a result it was subse-
quently very carefully reviewed by four reviewers. The habilitation was a success.
Using the insightful comments from MY reviewers, I have improved the current
version and eliminated some typographic errors that were initially overlooked.
December 2007, San Jose, California: It seems a long time ago.
I walked into a big networking company to head their small
Power over Ethernet (PoE) applications team. Surprisingly,
I hardly knew anything about PoE prior to that day, having been a
switching-power conversion engineer almost all MY life. But it
seemed a great opportunity to widen MY horizons. As you can see,
one notable outcome of that seemingly illogical career choice five
years ago is the book you hold in your hands today. I hope this small
body of work goes on to prove worthy of your expectations and also
of all the effort that went into it. Because, behind the scenes, there is a
rather interesting story to relate—about its backdrop, intertwined
with a small slice of modern PoE history, punctuated by a rather res-
tive search for our roots and our true heroes, one that takes us back
almost two centuries
Thepredecessorvolumeofthisbookwaspublishedin1996.Intheyears
since then, some things have changed and some have not.
Two of the things that have not changed are the desire for better
models and faster simulations. I performed the original simulations on
MY “hyperfast” 133-MHz computer! At the time, I thought if I could just
getafastercomputer,allofourSPICEproblemswouldbehistory,right?
TodayIamsimulatingonacomputerthathasa2.6-GHzprocessorwith
512 MB of RAM, and I would still say that simulations run too slow.
The computer technology has evolved, but so have the models. In 1996
wewereperformingsimulationson100-kHzpowerconverters,whereas
today I routinely see 1- and 2-MHz power converters.
