Book excerpt: In today's competitive and fast-changing telecom industry, most professionals find themselves in the difficult situation of having to sacrifice keeping on top of the latest technology because they are striving to meet another round of high-pressure deadlines. Essentials of Modern Telecommunications Systems offers you a solution to this problem, helping you quickly coming up to speed with the latest advances in your field. By cutting out arcane mathematics and management-speak jargon, it focuses on the essentials you need for rapidly understanding and mastering the latest implementation and development techniques. It provides the complete systems picture from semiconductors to end-to-end networking.