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Christodoulou, Blaunstein Pen Second Edition

June 27, 2014 - Chuck Reuben

Christos and NathanNothing spells sweet success like a second edition, especially in academia where textbooks aren't selling like hotcakes. This feat is particularly noteworthy when the subject matter is microwaves — which can hardly be called light reading.

ECE Professsor Christos Christodoulou’s book, Radio Propagation and Adaptive Antennas for Wireless Communication Networks, recently achieved the milestone of a second edition and he’s feeling good about it, “It is one of the most updated and most thorough books in this area,” he said proudly.

The book was published by John Wiley & Sons, a global publishing company founded in 1807 that specializes in academic publishing. According to Kai Chang, editor of the Wiley Series in Microwave and Optical Engineering, which included Christodoulou’s book, the book was originally published in October 2006 and several thousand of them have been sold to “professional people and for classroom use as a textbook.”

Chang, who also serves as a professor at Texas A&M University said that Christodoulou’s book is “a very good book [and] has lots of theoretical background for people working in this area. It also has practical applications.”

The first edition of the book was very popular among radio engineers and designers of wireless communication links because it allowed them to predict grade of service, quality of service and the information data rate that passed each individual link.

Christodoulou co-authored the book with Nathan Blaunstein, a professor at the Communication Systems Engineering Department at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheba, Israel. Christodoulou and Blaunstein shared the responsibility of writing the book equally.

“I wrote chapters regarding radio propagation in different media and on various wireless systems,” said Blaunstein, “Christos dealt with chapters and parts of chapters regarding antennas and their applications in various wireless systems.”

WileyBlaunstein left the former USSR in and immigrated to Israel in 1992. He first met Christodoulou in Calfornia in 1995. “He asked me a lot of questions on my report regarding radio propagation scenarios in built-up communication environment. He first suggested for me to use a general theory of radio wave propagation, based on statistical and quantum electrodynamics, in specific engineering fields, mostly for adaptive/smart multi-beam antennas applications.”

Christodoulou has worked with Blaunstein for over 10 years. UNM and Ben-Gurion University have a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on mutual scientific and educational collaboration.

Blaunstein said that his collaboration with Christodoulou has lead to important findings that will be added to the book in the new second addition.

“Christos was the first who understood the usefulness of such a unified technique for successful applications in wireless communication systems beyond 3-G (4-G and more),” said Blaunstein, “Obtaining very serious, practical results with him, we decided to introduce these very important results in the second edition of our joint book.”

No doubt these results in the second edition of their book will be hailed with as much fervor as those presented in the first edition.