The Art of [RF] Electronics

[garboui]

Is there an RF focused equivalent to The Art of Electronics?

[PartialDischarge]

This one is very instructive for analog RF design, doesn't cover microwaves or fancy rf modules though

https://www.amazon.com/Circuit-Design-Second-Christopher-Bowick/dp/0750685182

[nctnico]

IMHO the ARRL handbook is pretty useless for RF design. It is more for radio amateurs to setup antenna's and such. For real RF design work you need a book which goes deeper into the theory.

[garboui]

This one is very instructive for analog RF design, doesn't cover microwaves or fancy rf modules though

https://www.amazon.com/Circuit-Design-Second-Christopher-Bowick/dp/0750685182

This looks sweet, gonna order it. (more suggestions still welcome.


 

IMHO the ARRL handbook is pretty useless for RF design. It is more for radio amateurs to setup antenna's and such. For real RF design work you need a book which goes deeper into the theory.

That was my suspicion with the AARL books. My work generally incorporates 433-2.4GHz. As all my knowledge with working with and designing RF into products is experiential I want the book to fill in all the gaps that I have missed from not being formally trained in RF.

[Georgi]

I find this book pretty interesting and informative when it comes to rf electronics https://www.amazon.com/Radio-Frequency-Electronics-Applications-Jon-Hagen-ebook/dp/B002S3UBHO/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1471715341&sr=8-5&keywords=cambridge+radio+frequency+electronics

[4CX35000]

Is there an RF focused equivalent to The Art of Electronics?

You will find that you need to use multiple books as the subject can be vast to learn depending on the area you want to work in. Older books tend to concentrate on valve technology such as Triodes, Tetrodes and Klystrons, while modern books concentrate on transistor technology (Bipolar and FET technology).

Chris Bowick book has already been mentioned, but below is my list of useful books and introductory books.

Experimental Methods in RF Design by Hayward, Campbell and Larkin.
RF Design Guide by Vizmuller.
Complete Wireless Design by Sayre
The Electronics of Radio by Rutledge
RF Design Basics by Fielding ZS5JF

More advanced books
High Speed Digital Design by Johnson and Graham
High Speed Signal Propagation

My tip is to get familiar with LCR networks using polar and rectangular form and biasing transistors at DC levels. Chris Bowick book is a good place to start but it does have the odd gap, but he has released a update version of his book, so those gaps may have been filled or edited out. My book is a brown cover which must be 20 year old now. Don't worry too much about the Smith Chart, Bowick book discusses the chart in reasonable detail.

Regards

[kg4arn]

A book that I rarely see mentioned but is one of my favorites (and I have most all the ones mentioned above) is:

Radio Receiver Design by Kevin McClaning and Tom Vito. 

It's a theory book but very readable.  I literally could not put it down.

Another book which is out of print:

Introduction to Radio Frequency Design by Wes Hayward

Anything Hayward has written is instructive and worth reading.

[garboui]

Is there an RF focused equivalent to The Art of Electronics?

You will find that you need to use multiple books as the subject can be vast to learn depending on the area you want to work in....

To narrow it down more. I am not planning on building my own discreet Tx/Rx but more of getting the knowledge of being able to integrate at the chip level (RFIC->PA->filters-->antenna matching), and not boff it up to badly on the first go around.I am already beginning to get some comfort with antenna matching but as it is with learning anything, the more you begin to know the more you realize you dont know.  I have RF test and measurement equipment at my disposal so I am fortunate to not be limited here.

[LaserSteve]

I'll second Haywards's book and say get some pdfs of various editions of the RSGB microwave and UHF\VHF Handbooks. OLDER editions of the two volume Motorola RF transistor handbooks have well written  app notes on matching and biasing transistors, including the Smith Chart techniques.

That, and download  HP Appcad from the Woodshot site.


Steve

[AF6LJ]

IMHO the ARRL handbook is pretty useless for RF design. It is more for radio amateurs to setup antenna's and such. For real RF design work you need a book which goes deeper into the theory.

It is fairly useless in this age and day...
To top it off; in this day and age most of the "Art" is gone...

[jopie]

I came across "Secrets of RF circuit design" by Joseph J. Carr.

It starts out with a description of RF components and already in chapter 5 you will build your own receiver with a NE602 (ugh).

in this day and age most of the "Art" is gone...

I agree... :sad:

Regards,
Joop PG4I

[CJay]

While I'm nowhere near expert level, I have a few books on the shelf, the older RSGB books are useful as they're discrete component focussed but my two favourites are (as mentioned by others)

Experimental Methods in RF Design by Wes Hayward

and

Secrets of RF Circuit design by Joe Carr

Joe Carr had a bit of a thing about the NE602 chip, he seemed to regard them as the 555 of the RF world and who am I to argue.

While his choice of that chip might be derided by many, the basics still apply.

[Howardlong]

This one is very instructive for analog RF design, doesn't cover microwaves or fancy rf modules though

https://www.amazon.com/Circuit-Design-Second-Christopher-Bowick/dp/0750685182

Another vote for this one. It's a really good balance between practical and theoretical knowledge. I think there are pdfs of it knocking about. There's a really good section on Smith Charts too if that's what floats your boat.

Too many books in this domain are academics demonstrating their maths chops with little if any real demonstrated practical application. (This is not just in RF, it's the result of a continual push to get things published so they climb the greasy pole of academia.)

Not altogether sure about ham books, it's a bit of a crap shoot: I've many dozens of them collected over the years, but they tend to be recipe based with little derivation. No harm in that, but many of the projects are simply not reproducible, and you only find that out after the event. They have their place, but I'd be wary of them.

[bicc1306]

Here is a List of books which can really help you.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/similar/556821-the-art-of-electronics

[MagicSmoker]

Another vote here for Bowick's book, and I also recommend, "Radio Frequency Transistors," by Dye, Granberg and Leighton.

Hmm... just checked pricing on Amazon - it's a bit steep, all things considered. If you have to just get one book then get Bowick's.

[LaserSteve]

Abebooks.com is wonderful for obtaining good RF and Electronics books cheap. Lets you feel good about learning while keeping good stuff out of the landfill. I've picked up a few "priceless gems" for next to nothing. A lot of the basics and technical history has never made it onto the Web.  Knowing about old tech makes it much easier to make new tech.

"bowick rf" as a keyword term brings up both the old editions and a new updated book covering modern concepts  at Abebooks.

Steve

[Kelbit]

This one is very instructive for analog RF design, doesn't cover microwaves or fancy rf modules though

https://www.amazon.com/Circuit-Design-Second-Christopher-Bowick/dp/0750685182

Adding another vote for Bowick. Great book, covers the fundamentals in a really accessible way. Good balance between theory and practice.

[kazam]

Pozar - Microwave Engineering

Dense stuff but if you need the theory it's all in there.

The problem with RF is that you can't really simplify too much. It is what it is.

[Alex Eisenhut]

The grandaddy of them all:

MIT Rad Lab

https://www.jlab.org/ir/MITSeries.html

[KE5FX]

The ARRL Handbook is a helluva lot more useful and relevant than people are giving it credit for here.

Also suggest checking out Lee's Planar Microwave Engineering before jumping all the way into Pozar.  Bowick is good but Lee is more comprehensive.

The WWII-era Rad Lab volumes are of great historical interest but not very useful for newcomers.

[G0HZU]

Yes, when I was a student, I found the ARRL handbook to be a fabulous resource when looking for 'real' circuits to study.

It sometimes lacked a bit of theory for some of the circuits but they were proven circuits and could be built and/or simulated and studied. Also there were LOTs of circuits like this in the book. It was a long time ago but there weren't that many books that could match it in this respect.

Try buying a (cheap) used copy from each decade because I think stuff gets omitted after a while. I haven't seen a modern ARRL handbook though. The last one I read was published in 2007. The first one was a 1981 (but it might have been 1982 or 1983, I can't remember) copy and it eventually fell apart because I read it so often when I was a student. I still have the 1989 copy in hardback and this is still in one piece. The older copy was softback and ended up falling apart into several pieces with loose pages falling out all the time.

I also had an old electronics/comms design book written by Doug Demaw and this suffered a similar fate. I read it so much it fell apart. I think this is a compliment to the usefulness of these old books

[G0HZU]

I will also recommend reading Bowick. I still have my old 'home' copy here but my works copy eventually got borrowed/lost. It's a classic reference book for all RF designers but you have to be careful of the various errors in the book. I did once keep a list of the errors many years ago and sadly, some of them are still in the second edition.

'Introduction to RF Design' by Hayward is another useful book that I will also recommend and so is the 'RF Design Guide' book by Peter Vizmuller. But these books are expensive. Vizmuller is a great 'shortform reference' book to have but I think it is overpriced. I think our works copy was very expensive indeed. I bought my copy of Hayward about 20 years ago on a promotion from the RSGB where they sold it for a fraction of the normal price. I think you can buy used copies of Hayward quite cheaply nowadays.

[DenzilPenberthy]

Pozar was the course textbook when I did RF stuff at Uni but the Bowick book is the one I bought and have actually used a lot since doing it for a living.

 

[setq]

There's a literal ton of useful stuff in the Tektronix Concepts series on Spectrum Analyzers as well: http://w140.com/tekwiki/images/5/53/062-1055-00.pdf

This references the MIT books Alex Eisenhut linked to above.

Even their vertical amp text has some good stuff regarding high frequency amplifiers, compensation and linearity http://w140.com/tekwiki/images/f/fd/062-1145-00.pdf

I have a copy of EMRFD and I don't rate it. Perhaps I was spoiled with the old Heath training manuals many years ago (they are really good), but I prefer some more direction and structure to the information provided. Plus there's too much hidden magic in it and the engineering isn't particularly rigorous.

The Bowood text looks decent. I'll grab a copy of that when the time comes.

To be honest, the lack of a decent book on the subject (and my refusal to foot the cash for a canned rig and the fact I'm unsociable ) is probably why I'm not a ham

[PartialDischarge]

Compensation networks hmmm  , a topic I was just looking information on