ve under- standing of the technology with mathematical rigor are among the best in the field. Second, and more specific to the topic of this book, because of the increased importance of telecommunications to our economic and social well-being, we need to encourage students and practicing engineers to enter and maintain their skills in the field. Making the requisite techni- cal knowledge accessible is an important step in that direction. In short, this book is an important and timely contribution to the telecommunications engineering field. Dale N. Hatfield Former Chief, Office of Engineering and Technology Federal Communications Commission What's on the CD-ROM? The CD-ROM accompanying this book contains a fully searchable, electronic version (eBook) of the entire contents of this book, in Adobe® pdf format. In addition, it contains interactive MATLAB® tutorials that demonstrate some of the concepts covered in the book. In order to run these tutorials from the CD-ROM, you must have MATLAB installed on your computer. MATLAB, published by The Math Works, Inc., is a powerful mathematics software package used almost universally by the engineering departments of colleges and universities, and at many companies as well. A reasonably priced student version of MATLAB is available from www.mathworks.com. A link to their web site has been provided on the CD-ROM. Using the Tutorials Each tutorial delves deeper into a particular topic dealt with in the book, providing more visuals and interaction with the concepts pre- sented. Note that the explanatory text box that overlays the visuals can be dragged to the side SO that you can view the graphics and other aids before clicking "OK" to move to the next window. Each tutorial filename reflects the chapter in the book with which it is associated. I recommend that you read the chapter first, then run the associated tutorial(s) to help deepen your understanding. To run a particular tuto- rial, open MATLAB and choose Run Script from the Command Window File menu. When prompted, loca