This book emerged from teaching a graduate level course in propagation
and smart antennas at the Naval Postgraduate School. In its present
form, it is suitable not only as a graduate level text, but also as a
reference book for industry and research use. The area of radiowave
propagation and smart antennas is highly interdisciplinary, extracting
material from electromagn- ics, communications, and signal processing.
This book is useful to workers in electromagnetics who would like to
supplement their background with relevant communicational aspects and to
workers in communications who would like to supplement their background
with relevant electromagnetic aspects. Anyone with a basic understanding
of probability, wave propagation, digital com- nications, and elementary
signal processing should be able to appreciate the contents of the book.
The book consists of nine chapters with several worked out examples d-
persed throughout. Chapter 1 covers the basics of cellular
communications. Chapter 2 covers the basic principles of electromagnetic
wave propagation relevant to path loss predictions in wireless
communications. Students with little prior background in
electromagnetics should find the first few sections of Chapter 2
self-sufficient. Empirical path loss models that are used in system
design are treated in Chapter 3. The chapter includes the traditional
models as well as some of the newer models. Chapter 4 has a thorough
discussion on the causes and characterization of small scale fading. The
topic of spatial c- relation that is very important for antenna arrays
is discussed there in detail.