Broadband Cable TV Access Networks: From Technologies to Applications

Cable television networks, since they have an enormous capacity to transmit analog and digital information and reach into almost every North American home, are being called upon to serve as the infrastructure for all sorts of consumer services. In Broadband Cable TV Access Networks: From Technologies to Applications, Intel Corporation expert Shlomo Ovadia explains the operation of cable television networks for the benefit of network designers, operations engineers, and people engaged in designing cable modems and other equipment. The approach in this book is detailed and specialized, but the clear writing style, attention to detail, and eagerness to explain how principles extrapolate out to customer services make it outstanding.

Ovadia approaches the subject through electrical engineering and electronics principles, illustrating explanations with circuit diagrams, oscilloscope traces, equations, and plots. Explanations of fundamentals are accompanied by discussions with block diagrams, and are dissected in ever greater detail.

While this book has done a great job of explaining, from a technical point of view, the increasing overlap of the cable television network with the switched telephone network and the Internet, be sure to read Telecommunications Convergence for a more (but not entirely) business-oriented look at the issue. --David Wall

Topics covered: Cable television networks and why they work, with emphasis on how they can be adapted for all sorts of last-mile broadband applications. Fundamentals are covered, such as lightwave transmitters and receivers, optical fiber amplifiers, RF digital quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) modems, and the Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) protocol.