Wireless Personal Communications: Advances in Coverage and Capacity

The wireless industry is growing at a phenomenal rate. Cellular subscribers are increasing at a rate of 45% per year, the market for wireless local loop service is growing at a rate of 42%, and the wireless local area network market is growing at a rate of 61 %. This growth and potential for future growth has motivated companies to commit $20 billion in obtaining 90 MHz of PCS spectrum during the recent FCC auctions in the United States. Obviously spectrum is a costly, but critical, resource. Efficient utilization of this resource is essential for profitable wireless service. To meet this challenge, researchers in wireless communications are tenaciously developing more spectrally efficient modulation techniques, planning tools for efficient communication system layout, and digital signal processing techniques for more robust communications. The papers and lectures presented in this book were originally given at the Sixth Annual Virginia Tech Symposium on Wireless Personal Communications and cover a broad range of topics in wireless communications. The majority of the papers are relevant to creating higher capacity (spectrally efficient) systems with greater coverage. Topics include adaptive antenna array measurements and algorithm comparisons, Cellular Digital Packet Data deployment guidelines, speech coding techniques, wireless system design methodology, and propagation measurements in hostile or previously unexplored channels.