Report by the Japanese Technology Evaluation Center.

The area of personal and wireless communications is a burgeoning field. Technology advances and new frequency allocations for personal communication services (PCS) are creating numerous business and technical opportunities. It is becoming clear that an essential requirement for exploiting opportunities is the ability to track the dramatic changes in wireless technology, which is a principal aim of this book. Wireless Personal Communications: Research Developments places particular emphasis on the areas of signal processing, propagation and spread-spectrum, and emerging communication systems. This book contains new results on adaptive antennas for capacity improvements in wireless communication systems, as well as state-of-the-art information on the latest technical developments. Also included are several chapters which discuss the impact of defense conversion on the wireless industry, and related competitive issues. The six parts of the book each focus on a distinct issue in wireless communications. Part I contains several tutorial chapters on key areas in wireless communications. The first chapter is on radio wave propagation for emerging wireless personal communication systems. Chapter two contains a comprehensive study of emerging DSP-based interference rejection techniques for single channel (antenna) systems. Chapter three deals with spread spectrum wireless communications, explaining the concept of spread spectrum, modeling techniques for spread spectrum, and current applications and research issues for spread spectrum systems. Part II focuses on digital signal processing and spread spectrum, two means of creating interference and multipath robust communications. Part III concerns propagation aspects of wireless communications. Part IV discusses the performance of emerging wireless systems. Part V describes the opportunities and pitfalls of defense conversion from the perspective of several U.S. defense firms that have successfully made the transition to commercial wireless. The final section discusses a number of competitive issues regarding personal communication services.

By simultaneously examining the concerns of design, production, purchasing, finance, and marketing from the very first stages of product planning, concurrent engineering makes doing it right the first time the rule instead of the exception. This should be the first book managers read when they are ready to eliminate waste in the product development process.An introductory handbook, it gives managers 16 clear guidelines for achieving concurrent engineering and contains abundant case studies of Japanese, U.S., and European company success stories.The book also:Defines the concurrent engineering task force as a full-time, multidisciplinary unit of operation.Discusses the necessary interdependence of concurrent engineering, Quality Function Deployment, Total Quality Control, and CAD/CAM.Shows how concurrent engineering can be structured to fit your company and used to gain flexibility and efficiency.

Voice communications remains the most important facet of mobile radio services, which may be delivered over conventional fixed links, the Internet or wireless channels. This all-encompassing volume reports on the entire 50-year history of voice compression, on recent audio compression techniques and the protection as well as transmission of these signals in hostile wireless propagation environments. Audio and Voice Compression for Wireless and Wireline Communications, Second Edition is divided into four parts with Part I covering the basics, while Part II outlines the design of analysis-by-synthesis coding, including a 100-page chapter on virtually all existing standardised speech codecs. The focus of Part III is on wideband and audio coding as well as transmission. Finally, Part IV concludes the book with a range of very low rate encoding techniques, scanning a range of research-oriented topics. Fully updated and revised second edition of “Voice Compression and Communications”, expanded to cover Audio features Includes two new chapters, on narrowband and wideband AMR coding, and MPEG audio coding Addresses the new developments in the field of wideband speech and audio compression Covers compression, error resilience and error correction coding, as well as transmission aspects, including cutting-edge turbo transceivers Presents both the historic and current view of speech compression and communications. Covering fundamental concepts in a non-mathematical way before moving to detailed discussions of theoretical principles, future concepts and solutions to various specific wireless voice communication problems, this book will appeal to both advanced readers and those with a background knowledge of signal processing and communications.

Up-to-date, expert coverage of topics in wireless voice communications Voice communication is the most important facet of mobile radio service. Even when the predicted surge of wireless data and Internet services becomes a reality, voice will remain the most natural means of human communication. Voice Compression and Communications details issues in wireless voice communications and treats compression, channel coding, and wireless transmission as a joint subject. Part I covers background material, whereas Part II provides detailed information on both proprietary and standardized analysis-by-synthesis codecs, including the speech codecs of virtually all existing wireline-based and wireless systems. Parts III and IV discuss mainly research-based wideband, audio, as well as very low-rate schemes likely to find their way into future standards. Voice Compression and Communications describes fundamental concepts in a non-mathematical way early in the book for those with only a background knowledge of signal processing and communications. More advanced readers will find detailed discussions of theoretical principles, future concepts, and solutions to various specific wireless voice communications problems.