This book provides an engineering description of the methods used to process and transmit broadband signals. As such, it includes both the analog and digital transmission of data and graphic information, as well as multiplexed voice transmission. The technological developments of the past decade have brought to the system designer a seeming wealth of possibilities for communications transmission. The selection of the best method for a given application, however, may be rendered difficult because much of the information is scattered among several texts and many different published papers. This text brings together in one volume a treatment of all broadband communication system types at a level readily understandable by the practicing engineer. It allows a detailed understanding and evaluation of each system type, and provides the information needed to structure special-purpose transmission systems. The material has been developed over a period of ten years, during which the author has been teaching a popular continuing engineering education course on Broadband Communication Systems several times per year. This course often is attended by recent engineering graduates who express the need for more information at the senior and graduate level on the engineering of transmission systems for high-speed data and video, as well as for multi-channel voice. Thus, the book has been written not only for the practicing engineer, but also to supplement more theoretical texts used in telecommunications engineering courses. Accordingly, problems are included at the ends of most of the chapters. Chief engineers and engineering managers also will find portions of the text useful in understanding the basic ideas and structure of broadband communication system for overall end-to-end system planning purposes. While the emphasis of the book is on broadband systems and technology, the principles are applicable generally to narrowband systems as well. Readers interested in speech coding techniques are referred to the book Digital Telephony and Network Integration, [Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, Inc.], co-authored with Eugene Strange. Such media as high-frequency radio are not included because of their limited bandwidth per channel. The term wideband is used by some to designate systems up to 1.5 or 2.0 Mb/s, with higher transmission rates being designated broadband. Others use the term broadband for any system whose bandwidth is in excess of voice bandwidth. This text uses the name broadband to encompass all systems operating at rates beyond those of voice systems, without further delineation..
Bernhard E. Keiser, DScEE, is a Consulting Engineer in Telecommunications with offices at 2046 Carrhill Road, Vienna, VA 22181, (703-281-9582). He is a Registered Professional Engineer in Virginia and Maryland, and served in a number of advanced engineering and management positions in several major corporations prior to establishing his own consulting engineering practice.
Dr. Keiser has been involved in the planning and design of numerous microwave radio systems, including systems for military applications in remote areas, as well as commercial systems. He also has done extensive studies and design in the control of microwave fields to allow satellite and microwave radio systems to co-exist in the same spectrum. Dr. Keiser also has many years of experience in satellite systems. He worked in the early development of several domestic satellite systems, performed transponder loading studies, and developed test plans for the prediction of transmission impairments. In addition, he has performed numerous link studies.
Dr. Keiser holds two U. S. patents for the control of microwave fields, and has published twenty-six papers in telecommunications and related areas. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, the Washington Academy of Sciences and the Radio Club of America, and has served as Chairman of the Northern Virginia Section of the IEEE. He is listed in Who's Who in America, Who's Who in Engineering, and American Men of Science. He is the author of the text, Broadband Coding, Modulation and Transmission Engineering, published by Prentice-Hall in 1989.
