Page 37 - Fundamentals of Communications Systems

Introduction 1.3

for example, has worked for 20 years and for five companies designing com-
munication systems with only a rudimentary knowledge of circuit theory. Sys-
tems engineering in communications did not really come to be a formalized
field until the early 1900s, hence few of the references in this book were pub-
lished before 1900. Some interesting historical system engineering references
are [Car26, Nyq28a, Arm35, Har28, Ric45, Sha48, Wie49]. This systems level
perspective is very useful for education in that; while technology will change
greatly during an engineer’s career, the theory will be reasonably stable.

1.2 Goals for This Text
What this text is attempting to do is to show the mathematical and engineering
underpinings of communication systems and systems engineering. While most
students have used communication technology, few realize that the technology
is built upon a strong core of engineering principles and over 100 years of hard
work by a large group of talented people. Without a talented engineering work-
force who understood the fundamental theory and put this theory into practice,
humans would not have been able to deploy the pervasive communications soci-
ety experiences. The goal for this text is to have some small part in the education
of the workforce that will implement the next 50 years of progress. To reach
this goal this text will focus on teaching the fundamentals of communication
theory by:

■ demonstrating that the mathematical tools the students have learned in their
undergraduate education are useful in engineering practice.
■ showing that with modern integrated circuits the theory is directly reflected
in engineering practice.
■ detailing how engineering trade-offs in a communication system are ever
evolving and that these trade-offs involve fidelity of message reconstruction,
bandwidth efficiency, and complexity of the implementation.
Hopefully in addition to these professional goals, the reader of this text will
come away with:
■ a historical perspective on the hard work that has led to the current state of
the art.
■ a sense of how fundamental engineering tools have real impact on system
design.
■ a realization that fundamental engineering tools have changed little even as
the technology to implement designs has evolved at a withering pace.
■ an understanding that communications engineering is a growing and evolv-
ing entity and that continued education will be an important part of a career
as a communication engineer.