Wireless Networks:
From the Physical Layer to Communication, Computing, Sensing, and Control
Edited by Giorgio Franceschetti and Sabatino Stornelli, Academic Press
ISBN 0-12-369426-4, hardback, 360 pp, $79.95

ZONE Reviewer: Dennis L. Feucht

This book is a compilation by Italians, drawing from people all over the world -- from America, China, Egypt, Iran, Switzerland, Romania, India, and of course, Italy. It covers the basic principles of wireless networked communications, beginning with the physical layer, covering orthogonal modulations, and then the wireless channel propagation, selectivity, physical model, and channel capacity. Handset communications antennas are given an entire chapter, including the human (head) effect. Chapter 4 presents a wireless channel model, followed by ad hoc wireless networks and their protocols, including design challenges. Some specific networks are described: MINUTEMAN and LANMAR.

Chapter 6 is on "Sensor Networks," with emphasis on data gathering. Finally, Chapter 7 ends the book on the topic of the future of wireless networks and "the expected next revolution in information technology."

The book gets off to a slow, repetitious, self-congratulatory and pro-bureaucratic start, then improves. In the European style, it is not light on math and presents various aspects of cell-phone communications in a readable, engineering manner, right down to RF models of the human head. The book is amply illustrated, with computer-generated pictures, graphs, charts, block diagrams and even a circuit diagram or two. The emphasis of the book is on the networking aspect, leading to chapters on the wireless channel model, network routing algorithms, and sensor networks. Exploration of the future possibilities and limitations of wireless networks is presented in a final chapter.

This book contains plenty of useful engineering information and is explained well. I found no typographical errors in my light read and partial scan of it, nor any grammatically incorrect English. The Italian editors are to be credited for doing such a good job of editing a book in a second language to them. The book appears to mainly be targeted for working engineers who have wireless network involvement of any kind.