The Satellite Communication Ground Segment and Earth Station Handbook (Artech House Space Technology and Applications) 2nd ed. Edition

As a NASA GSFC telecommunication networks professional, this book resonates with my NEN/NSN ground station experience quite well. It covers many topics I'm familiar with in my line of work.

The concepts presented in this book are truly invaluable, and will no doubt be useful for any industry professional. However, this information will be difficult to extract from the poor writing. The author seems to have a general idea of what he wants to say in every section but clearly did not do the amount of rewriting necessary to make what he wanted to say easily understandable to the reader. This is not limited to sections on highly technical material either. For example, the author will start saying things pertaining to a particular example without introducing the example first, or even acknowledging that he was giving an example. These details are just mixed in with general principles. To be clear, it is possible to extract this information from the text. Just understand that it will require more effort on the part of the reader than it really should.

I'm in the process of writing an application note for a leading test and measurement company discussing the validation and maintenance of satellite ground stations. I found "The Satellite Communications Ground Segment and Earth Station Handbook" to be the single most comprehensive text on the topic. It's written in sufficent technical depth such that an RF engineer can readily understand the concepts from detailed explanations of earth station components to whole system operation. I'm relying on Bruce Elbert's text to validate the work I'm doing.Tom HoppinApplication Consultant