How Wireless Works (How It Works Series (Emeryville, Calif.).)
"Any sufficiently advanced technology," said2001author Arthur  C. Clarke, "is indistinguishable from magic." By that standard, those of us who  carry wireless phones and palmtop computers have been running around with more  magical devices than the average character in a Harry Potter novel.How  Wireless Worksaims to strip wireless of its mystical characteristics, and  succeeds wonderfully with illustrations and highly modular text. The proven How  It Works series format suits wireless technology very well, largely because  wireless services can be explained as stories (the handset sends the dialed  number to the nearest base station, which contacts its switching center, which  routes the call, and so on). Preston Gralla, a great explainer of technical  subjects who's written several fine books, makes great use of the "enhanced  comic book" style to show what talks to what, when, and why. He doesn't  oversimplify, either. Though reading this book won't fully prepare you for a job  at a wireless service provider, it will enable you to speak intelligently about  the differences among various mobile telephony standards.It's very hard to  find fault with this book. All the latest technologies receive attention,  including the emerging Voice XML (VXML) concept and the General Packet Radio  Service (GPRS) standard that sees widespread Japanese use in NTT DoCoMo's i-mode  service. Gralla also does his readers a service by explaining activities like  mobile-phone service theft.--David WallTopics covered:Ways of communicating voice, data, video, and pretty much  anything else over distances, without having a wired connection. This covers the  whole range of technologies, from old-fashioned AM radio to swanky new services  like third-generation (3G) mobile and location-based services. Internetworking  is explained in the context of the unplugged Internet, and short-range wireless  specifications like Bluetooth get attention, too.