RF Circuit Design

I have read this book from cover to cover and I love it. The authors writting style is very easy to follow and most of the time the concepts are further explained with solved examples, which makes it easier to understand. However there are some times that concepts just mentioned and that leaves you wondering, but thats not very common in this book. Eventhough the cover says "thouroughly revised" there are still a lot of typos like duplicated words, and a few mistakes in the solved excercises, nothing really serious though. However there's a reference to a data sheet in the first chapter that im still trying to find. I would say that you need prior knowledge to really understand this book, like electric circuits theory, BJT and FET transistor operation, biasing and transistor configurations, transmission lines, modulation and types of modulation (AM, FM,QAM, PSK, etc..), also knowing Matlab and a bit of feedback theory wouldnt hurt. Now I will try to give a very brief overview of each chapter, in my opinion, the meat of the book is in the first 6 chapters, the rest of the chapters are introductory at best, the last chapter on RF Design Tools is just out of my league. In general I felt that the book was a bit overcrowded with datasheets and tables as to "fill in" the space and make the book a bit thicker than it actually is, however its not just random data, since most of the time it is relevant to the subject in question. Chapter 1: Gives you the basics, but in a more realistic manner, meaning that you study how real inductors, capacitors and resistors work, along with their parasitic effects, and behavior at different frequencies, in contrast to the approach you usually learn in an electric circuits book using ideal components. It also explains how to calculate and build your own inductors, it reminded me of the book "The circuit designers companion". Page 19 makes a reference to some curves on a data sheet for a model BBR-7403 which im still trying to find (even online), if you know where to find it please let me know, Chapter 2: The book talks about resonant circuits and how to take into account the non ideal properties of inductors, which serves as an introduction for circuits used through out the book. Chapter 3: Covers filters, specifically passive filters, it starts using concepts from chapter 2 on resonant filters to develop simple 2nd order RLC filters, and ends up with multi order filters. It covers Butterworth, Chebyshev and Bessel filter design and characteristics. The design approach to develop such filters is extremely straightforward, the mathematical derivations are kept to a bare minimum, instead, tables are provided for the reader in a "color by numbers" approach in which you follow a certain procedure to determine the order of the filter needed, and then you just look for the normalized component values on the table, making it extremely simple, however I believe it limits you only to the values presented on the tables. The author explains how the Butterworth tables are obtained when both the source and load impedance are the same, but he doesnt explain how the tables for uneven load and source impedance are obtained, which kinda disappointed me, the same case happens with the Chebyshev and Bessel tables, in which its left to the reader to find out how the tables were obtained. In my opinion there should be an appendix with the Butterworth, Chebyshev and Bessel mathematical derivations to fill in the gaps for those of us how would like to do more than just crunching numbers, in order to make our own tables for exact load to source impedance ratios as needed. Chapter 4: In my opinion this is the best chapter in the book, it covers impedance matching networks in depth, and provides you with several methods to calculate the correct answer using either analytical methods, or using the smith chart which is introduced in this chapter and used extensively in the rest of the book. It also provides matlab and other specialized software examples to calculate different parameters of matching networks. Chapters 5 and 6: Cover Y and S parameters, Chapter 5 gives you an introduction to transistors and an in depth explanation on what are the Y and S parameters, using 2 port network theory, it helps you determine several parameters using transistor datasheet, as well as the smith chart. It also teaches you how to determine S parameters from Y parameters. Chapter 6 works on the design using Y and S parameters, including stability using the Linvill, Stern and Rollet stabilitty factors (no derivations are presented), finding the optimum bias point, and optimizing the circuit to obtain maximum gain or a specified gain by using the impedance matching networks presented on chapter 4, or to stabilize an unstable circuit by means of such matching networks. These two chapers could be considered the most complex or math heavy chapters in the book, however no mathematical derivations are presented, but rather the final formulae. Again, the smith chart is the main tool to calculate the different parameters including stability circles. Everything is further explained by using the Matlab RF toolbox , and providing a design example at the end of chapter 6 using software tools. It should be noted that the before mentioned chapters cover only small signal. Also, eventhough the material is very well presented, it only really tells you how to bias a certain transistor, and not how a real amplifier works as a whole and how the different stages interact with each other, it doesnt provide a real life circuit of say a low noise amplifier. I think there should be a schematic of a real amplifier with a brief explanation and what each of the stages do, although I understand that an entire book could be made just on amplifiers. Chapter 7: This in my opinion is the poorest chapter in the entire book. It is 16 pages long, from which 4 are just datasheets. It barely covers amplification clases (A, B, C), but the author just mentions them. Theres actually no power amplifier desing, but rather power amplifier characteristics, no biasing or configurations are actually explained but rather a block diagram approach is used. Instead, it covers how to match power amplifiers to coaxial lines using a Balun and how Balun's are made. The automatic shutdown circuitry explanation is only one paragraph long. I was very disappointed with this chapter, I understand that power amplification is a subject on its own, yet the title of the chapter is misleading, since no RF power amplifier design is actually covered, not even in the slightest way. The editor chose to advertise this chapter at the back of the book with stuff like "automatic shutdown circuitry" when the author barely mentions it in one paragraph, its misleading marketing. Chapter 8: This chapter covers a modern approach on RF front ends. Explaining briefly how demodulation works, superheterodyne recievers, and the parts of a common RF front end, again, in a block diagram level rather than in a circuit level. It covers key concepts like 1db Compression, third order intercept point, noise factor, sensitivity, selectivity, etc.. This is a very informative chapter, yet again, everything is left in as a basic introduction of concepts, Chapter 9: Presents different software tools and its application, it also comments on the real life stages of design of a product and what is covered in each stage in what the author refers to as the "design flow". PCB design, and and circuit simulation is covered in this chapter, aswell as the more industrial approach on product desing. It is a very interesting chapter and gives you a feel of how stuff is actually made, however most of the software and tools are just way out of my league since they are very expensive and tailored to RF professionals working in the field, yet if you are an RF professional, the information in this chapter is probably not enough. Several screenshots and graphs are provided, yet they are really hard to appreciate. The authors provided a website with all the smith charts in color, however I dont know why they didnt provide the screenshots as well... Overall I would say this is a great book, or a great introductory book to RF circuit design. I definitely enjoyed reading it and I learned a lot. One of the things I liked the most is that it is very straightforward yet it doesnt fall in the "cookbook" cathegory (with the exception of the Butterworth, Chebyshev and Bessel filter), so you do simple procedures, yet you get a good idea of whats going on. I love that modern software tools and techniques are incorporated into the book, and not just mentioned but actually explained. Its not a book for a hardcore academic, its a good introductory book for engineers, its definitely not a book for beginners. It kinda reminded me of the book "The Art of Electronics" in a way that the information is presented in a very practical way, and some rules of thumb or know values are used to solve problems, yet, it is easier to follow than The Art of Electronics. This book should be a must read for every engineer who wants to start a career in RF design.

I'm a mechanical engineer whose always been interested in learning more about electrical engineering. I wanted to understand how communications and RF circuits worked and possibly designing some remote controlled robot some day. I decided to start with this book since most reviews state that this is a great book to start. I like how this book takes small steps to show how circuits behave in the context of RF and how even the construction of certain components can impact the performance of a circuit. I mean, in DC circuits a resistor is a resistor and will always behave like a resistor, but I'm fascinated that a wire wound resistor could potentially behave more like an inductor at certain frequencies and so care must be taken when considering components. If I had bought a cookbook I'd have assumed I could buy any component and stick it on a bread board and have a radio controller in no time at all. I especially like seeing how it will prove a point with some simple step-by-step calculations. I'm amazed by how easy this book is to digest. When I first got this book I was hoping to learn how to attach an antennae to a circuit board and make it communicate with another circuit but I'm pleasantly surprised that I'm learning about good RF circuit design. I can't wait to pick up an antennae design book.

Far from holding a Electrical Engineer degree, I bought this book to help me with my silly ham radio mod projects. And yesterday i resorted to it to design a band-pass Chebyshev filter. Well, I went from zero understanding to a sketch in less than two hours (supported by a HP 32SII). The book is full of examples, tables and all I had to do is a focused read, understand the examples and transplant the results to my use case. And sorry, there's no milagro: You will have to do some math when trying more advanced topics (like I had yesterday) :-) 73s de PY2RAF.

I bought this book for an introduction to RF design class. The book, while not required, came highly recommended from my professor. I have currently read through Chapter 6, and I feel comfortable saying that this book is invaluable to any student or practicing engineer. The book offers a great intro to components at radio frequencies, and continues with resonant circuits and impedance transformations. This is followed by filter design and impedance matching, which I think is the best part of the book. It offers a very intuitive approach and clearly explains any problems. I am looking forward to finishing the book and potentially building some of the circuits described in the book. The complaints that I have are small. For one, there are some errors in the book that have distracted from the important material. The missing part datasheet turned up no results for me using a Google search. Lastly, I'd have to say my biggest complaint is that many equations are simply given with no derivation. As a student, I learn best when equations are derived so that I may understand the concept instead of just the equation itself. If you are willing, however, you can either derive the equations yourself or do another quick Google search to find the derivation. Overall, the book is great. The complaints listed are not enough to make this book receive any less than 5 stars. For the price, the book is an incredible asset, and I would recommend it to anyone who would like to learn more about RF circuits.

If you are going to move past the basics of amateur radio or are a professional that needs a refresher or pointers on specific issues this is a very in depth math heavy book. It is however not hard to read and is easily digestible. I highly recommend it for amateurs and professionals alike.

Best book purchased regarding RF Circuit design. Author easily explains everything from the basics through advanced topics in an orderly, planned tutorial-driven approach. Reading it is like a class in RF design with explained, detailed exercises, leaving nothing to guess. You will want to build these circuits just to see them work. Enthusiastically written which gives the reader confidence in RF circuit design and analysis.

We have used Chris's book for training and refreshing engineers for years. We have literally worn the cover off and I can't begin to tell you how many pages have been dog eared for future reference. The previous comments regarding "outdated" are, in my opinion, misguided since the focus of this book is more on the fundamentals and foundation of RF circuit design which HAS NOT changed since the first edition of the book was written. The information in this book is diverse and condensed very well. We haven't purchased the 2nd edition yet, but likely will in the new year to replace our reference copy. If Chris's book sounds too technical, you may want to start with Jon Hagen's "Radio Frequency Electronics" or if you are more into the magnetics side of it try Jerry Sevick's "Transmission Line Transformers". Lastly, if you need some general testing guidance, Joseph Carr's book "Practical Radio Frequency Test & Measurement" will likely be of some benefit. Having worked with the industry leaders in this field, I can honestly say that Chris and his colleagues are among the best in the industry and Chris's experience shows in the content of this very fine work.

I really like this book and how it explains various subjects in RF in a practical and uncomplicated way. My only negative comment is that the Smith Charts are hard to read and the jpg's provided on the companion site are not much better.

I thought that this was a very useful book. The chapter on antennas and RF front ends seemed to be of a different style than the rest of the book. This book included more information about electronic design than any other book that I have ever read. This book included information about the design of integrated circuits and I have never found a book that talks about IC design. Most books talk about using ICs in circuits but nothing about how to design an IC for manufacture. Unfortunately, there are a number of words that are not used correctly in the book. It appears that they had a good spell checker but apparently did not have a good proof reader to review for grammar and meaning. There is at least one diagram that is in the wrong chapter and mislabelled. Overall I was pleased with the information provided.

Book offers a concise and large quantity of information.

I have read this book from cover to cover and I love it. The authors writting style is very easy to follow and most of the time the concepts are further explained with solved examples, which makes it easier to understand. However there are some times that concepts just mentioned and that leaves you wondering, but thats not very common in this book. Eventhough the cover says "thouroughly revised" there are still a lot of typos like duplicated words, and a few mistakes in the solved excercises, nothing really serious though. However there's a reference to a data sheet in the first chapter that im still trying to find. I would say that you need prior knowledge to really understand this book, like electric circuits theory, BJT and FET transistor operation, biasing and transistor configurations, transmission lines, modulation and types of modulation (AM, FM,QAM, PSK, etc..), also knowing Matlab and a bit of feedback theory wouldnt hurt. Now I will try to give a very brief overview of each chapter, in my opinion, the meat of the book is in the first 6 chapters, the rest of the chapters are introductory at best, the last chapter on RF Design Tools is just out of my league. In general I felt that the book was a bit overcrowded with datasheets and tables as to "fill in" the space and make the book a bit thicker than it actually is, however its not just random data, since most of the time it is relevant to the subject in question. Chapter 1: Gives you the basics, but in a more realistic manner, meaning that you study how real inductors, capacitors and resistors work, along with their parasitic effects, and behavior at different frequencies, in contrast to the approach you usually learn in an electric circuits book using ideal components. It also explains how to calculate and build your own inductors, it reminded me of the book "The circuit designers companion". Page 19 makes a reference to some curves on a data sheet for a model BBR-7403 which im still trying to find (even online), if you know where to find it please let me know, Chapter 2: The book talks about resonant circuits and how to take into account the non ideal properties of inductors, which serves as an introduction for circuits used through out the book. Chapter 3: Covers filters, specifically passive filters, it starts using concepts from chapter 2 on resonant filters to develop simple 2nd order RLC filters, and ends up with multi order filters. It covers Butterworth, Chebyshev and Bessel filter design and characteristics. The design approach to develop such filters is extremely straightforward, the mathematical derivations are kept to a bare minimum, instead, tables are provided for the reader in a "color by numbers" approach in which you follow a certain procedure to determine the order of the filter needed, and then you just look for the normalized component values on the table, making it extremely simple, however I believe it limits you only to the values presented on the tables. The author explains how the Butterworth tables are obtained when both the source and load impedance are the same, but he doesnt explain how the tables for uneven load and source impedance are obtained, which kinda disappointed me, the same case happens with the Chebyshev and Bessel tables, in which its left to the reader to find out how the tables were obtained. In my opinion there should be an appendix with the Butterworth, Chebyshev and Bessel mathematical derivations to fill in the gaps for those of us how would like to do more than just crunching numbers, in order to make our own tables for exact load to source impedance ratios as needed. Chapter 4: In my opinion this is the best chapter in the book, it covers impedance matching networks in depth, and provides you with several methods to calculate the correct answer using either analytical methods, or using the smith chart which is introduced in this chapter and used extensively in the rest of the book. It also provides matlab and other specialized software examples to calculate different parameters of matching networks. Chapters 5 and 6: Cover Y and S parameters, Chapter 5 gives you an introduction to transistors and an in depth explanation on what are the Y and S parameters, using 2 port network theory, it helps you determine several parameters using transistor datasheet, as well as the smith chart. It also teaches you how to determine S parameters from Y parameters. Chapter 6 works on the design using Y and S parameters, including stability using the Linvill, Stern and Rollet stabilitty factors (no derivations are presented), finding the optimum bias point, and optimizing the circuit to obtain maximum gain or a specified gain by using the impedance matching networks presented on chapter 4, or to stabilize an unstable circuit by means of such matching networks. These two chapers could be considered the most complex or math heavy chapters in the book, however no mathematical derivations are presented, but rather the final formulae. Again, the smith chart is the main tool to calculate the different parameters including stability circles. Everything is further explained by using the Matlab RF toolbox , and providing a design example at the end of chapter 6 using software tools. It should be noted that the before mentioned chapters cover only small signal. Also, eventhough the material is very well presented, it only really tells you how to bias a certain transistor, and not how a real amplifier works as a whole and how the different stages interact with each other, it doesnt provide a real life circuit of say a low noise amplifier. I think there should be a schematic of a real amplifier with a brief explanation and what each of the stages do, although I understand that an entire book could be made just on amplifiers. Chapter 7: This in my opinion is the poorest chapter in the entire book. It is 16 pages long, from which 4 are just datasheets. It barely covers amplification clases (A, B, C), but the author just mentions them. Theres actually no power amplifier desing, but rather power amplifier characteristics, no biasing or configurations are actually explained but rather a block diagram approach is used. Instead, it covers how to match power amplifiers to coaxial lines using a Balun and how Balun's are made. The automatic shutdown circuitry explanation is only one paragraph long. I was very disappointed with this chapter, I understand that power amplification is a subject on its own, yet the title of the chapter is misleading, since no RF power amplifier design is actually covered, not even in the slightest way. The editor chose to advertise this chapter at the back of the book with stuff like "automatic shutdown circuitry" when the author barely mentions it in one paragraph, its misleading marketing. Chapter 8: This chapter covers a modern approach on RF front ends. Explaining briefly how demodulation works, superheterodyne recievers, and the parts of a common RF front end, again, in a block diagram level rather than in a circuit level. It covers key concepts like 1db Compression, third order intercept point, noise factor, sensitivity, selectivity, etc.. This is a very informative chapter, yet again, everything is left in as a basic introduction of concepts, Chapter 9: Presents different software tools and its application, it also comments on the real life stages of design of a product and what is covered in each stage in what the author refers to as the "design flow". PCB design, and and circuit simulation is covered in this chapter, aswell as the more industrial approach on product desing. It is a very interesting chapter and gives you a feel of how stuff is actually made, however most of the software and tools are just way out of my league since they are very expensive and tailored to RF professionals working in the field, yet if you are an RF professional, the information in this chapter is probably not enough. Several screenshots and graphs are provided, yet they are really hard to appreciate. The authors provided a website with all the smith charts in color, however I dont know why they didnt provide the screenshots as well... Overall I would say this is a great book, or a great introductory book to RF circuit design. I definitely enjoyed reading it and I learned a lot. One of the things I liked the most is that it is very straightforward yet it doesnt fall in the "cookbook" cathegory (with the exception of the Butterworth, Chebyshev and Bessel filter), so you do simple procedures, yet you get a good idea of whats going on. I love that modern software tools and techniques are incorporated into the book, and not just mentioned but actually explained. Its not a book for a hardcore academic, its a good introductory book for engineers, its definitely not a book for beginners. It kinda reminded me of the book "The Art of Electronics" in a way that the information is presented in a very practical way, and some rules of thumb or know values are used to solve problems, yet, it is easier to follow than The Art of Electronics. This book should be a must read for every engineer who wants to start a career in RF design.

I'm a mechanical engineer whose always been interested in learning more about electrical engineering. I wanted to understand how communications and RF circuits worked and possibly designing some remote controlled robot some day. I decided to start with this book since most reviews state that this is a great book to start. I like how this book takes small steps to show how circuits behave in the context of RF and how even the construction of certain components can impact the performance of a circuit. I mean, in DC circuits a resistor is a resistor and will always behave like a resistor, but I'm fascinated that a wire wound resistor could potentially behave more like an inductor at certain frequencies and so care must be taken when considering components. If I had bought a cookbook I'd have assumed I could buy any component and stick it on a bread board and have a radio controller in no time at all. I especially like seeing how it will prove a point with some simple step-by-step calculations. I'm amazed by how easy this book is to digest. When I first got this book I was hoping to learn how to attach an antennae to a circuit board and make it communicate with another circuit but I'm pleasantly surprised that I'm learning about good RF circuit design. I can't wait to pick up an antennae design book.

Far from holding a Electrical Engineer degree, I bought this book to help me with my silly ham radio mod projects. And yesterday i resorted to it to design a band-pass Chebyshev filter. Well, I went from zero understanding to a sketch in less than two hours (supported by a HP 32SII). The book is full of examples, tables and all I had to do is a focused read, understand the examples and transplant the results to my use case. And sorry, there's no milagro: You will have to do some math when trying more advanced topics (like I had yesterday) :-) 73s de PY2RAF.

I bought this book for an introduction to RF design class. The book, while not required, came highly recommended from my professor. I have currently read through Chapter 6, and I feel comfortable saying that this book is invaluable to any student or practicing engineer. The book offers a great intro to components at radio frequencies, and continues with resonant circuits and impedance transformations. This is followed by filter design and impedance matching, which I think is the best part of the book. It offers a very intuitive approach and clearly explains any problems. I am looking forward to finishing the book and potentially building some of the circuits described in the book. The complaints that I have are small. For one, there are some errors in the book that have distracted from the important material. The missing part datasheet turned up no results for me using a Google search. Lastly, I'd have to say my biggest complaint is that many equations are simply given with no derivation. As a student, I learn best when equations are derived so that I may understand the concept instead of just the equation itself. If you are willing, however, you can either derive the equations yourself or do another quick Google search to find the derivation. Overall, the book is great. The complaints listed are not enough to make this book receive any less than 5 stars. For the price, the book is an incredible asset, and I would recommend it to anyone who would like to learn more about RF circuits.

If you are going to move past the basics of amateur radio or are a professional that needs a refresher or pointers on specific issues this is a very in depth math heavy book. It is however not hard to read and is easily digestible. I highly recommend it for amateurs and professionals alike.

Best book purchased regarding RF Circuit design. Author easily explains everything from the basics through advanced topics in an orderly, planned tutorial-driven approach. Reading it is like a class in RF design with explained, detailed exercises, leaving nothing to guess. You will want to build these circuits just to see them work. Enthusiastically written which gives the reader confidence in RF circuit design and analysis.

We have used Chris's book for training and refreshing engineers for years. We have literally worn the cover off and I can't begin to tell you how many pages have been dog eared for future reference. The previous comments regarding "outdated" are, in my opinion, misguided since the focus of this book is more on the fundamentals and foundation of RF circuit design which HAS NOT changed since the first edition of the book was written. The information in this book is diverse and condensed very well. We haven't purchased the 2nd edition yet, but likely will in the new year to replace our reference copy. If Chris's book sounds too technical, you may want to start with Jon Hagen's "Radio Frequency Electronics" or if you are more into the magnetics side of it try Jerry Sevick's "Transmission Line Transformers". Lastly, if you need some general testing guidance, Joseph Carr's book "Practical Radio Frequency Test & Measurement" will likely be of some benefit. Having worked with the industry leaders in this field, I can honestly say that Chris and his colleagues are among the best in the industry and Chris's experience shows in the content of this very fine work.

I really like this book and how it explains various subjects in RF in a practical and uncomplicated way. My only negative comment is that the Smith Charts are hard to read and the jpg's provided on the companion site are not much better.

I thought that this was a very useful book. The chapter on antennas and RF front ends seemed to be of a different style than the rest of the book. This book included more information about electronic design than any other book that I have ever read. This book included information about the design of integrated circuits and I have never found a book that talks about IC design. Most books talk about using ICs in circuits but nothing about how to design an IC for manufacture. Unfortunately, there are a number of words that are not used correctly in the book. It appears that they had a good spell checker but apparently did not have a good proof reader to review for grammar and meaning. There is at least one diagram that is in the wrong chapter and mislabelled. Overall I was pleased with the information provided.

Book offers a concise and large quantity of information.

Really an excellent book. Make no mistake, it is work getting through it and understanding it, but it pays off over and over.

This is one of the most readable technical books I've read. I bought it to help with a home hobbyist project. I have a mechanical engineering background and used to work for a large electronics firm that manufactured commercial communications equipment and cell phones. I wish I would have had this book then as it would have be a great aid in woking with electrical engineers.

I have the older version of this book (the brown covered one with the Dominoes on it). I also have this version, which has several updated chapters. This is a great book for anyone's library who works with RF design. I still reach for it after 20+ years very often.

A classic covering all the basics in a good way with lots of examples. Unlike other books covering the basics, this one works with S-parameter, making the book just as current today as it was when it was written.

This book is well written. We are going to use it in our STEAMD++ engineering program.

This is by far one of the best RF books I have read for practical application and not just a bunch of theory and useless derivation. I am not a dedicated RF engineer but a design engineer whose products are starting to involve RF and antenna devices and I have found this book to be a great reference.

Great book - I had the previous version from years ago and saw the author had updated it. Got a great price on Amazon as always

Wow - This book is amazing, it is absolutely loaded with illustrations, tables, diagrams, and examples. You won't be disappointed

This is an excellent book for any one working with RF Equipment.

Great book

This is "the" book for all the RF engineering students who are still deciding if they want to pursue their career in RF or not. The beauty if this book is that it takes you in depth of every subject but still it doesn't overwhelm you. It's a great book.

Practical, straight forward, easy understand. Recommend it to other friends.

Great book! Detailed

If you need to understand the Smith Chart this book explains it very well. It is the reason I purchased it.

The first one was great. This is even better. Gives good info about latest EDA software products and applications. Some EDA programs mentioned are very inexpensive. Student version of MATLAB can be purchased for $99 and the RF toolbox for only $30 more. Very powerful. Also mentions SmithMatch from Microwave Software that also has a program called OptiMatch for optimization. I'm using MATLAB with RF toolbox to go through the problems in the book.

Well written, clear and easy to read. Suggested for engineers that need to go straight on specific topics. Anyway, one needs to have already a fundamental knowledge of RF Theory.

Too old technology

This book explains in a simple way how RF circuits are designed with lots off examples, A must have for Radiohams.

Great book.

Fast delivery. Unfortunately the right side of the top of the book got folded back.

Great reference easy to read

Great book....

Good product, i recommend this.

In ~200 pages this book covers material ranging from introduction to inductors and capacitors and finishes up covering super-hetrodyne receivers. It assumes you know nothing and tries to cover everything. Given the breadth, it ends up with no depth. If you want a book to put over your desk to try and impress coworkers it may be OK. If you need to do uwave/UHF design this is way too shallow.

Fine

Wow! Very fast shipping and great deal.

New book came in as scheduled. The boook was packaged very well. No experience of customer service as I was compeltely satisfied.

Not a very good book, but teaches you things. I do not like how some example problems shown the relevant plot/chart a few pages later in some cases, WTF.

This book is a bridge for any beginner, with a good understand of electronics and the math around it, to being able to read more advanced books on more complicated subjects such as oscillator design and the Smith Chart. It is very important to understand the math and theory about the matching networks shown in the books and the basic filter design (parallel and series). Personally I don't treat the more advanced filter design in this book as important, because this book is unable to explain the math on the filters, and the filters are very limited. I gave this book four stars because the book used the Smith Chart as an impedance matching tool (which it is), however, it did not explain the transmission coefficient, reflection coefficient, etc. It also did a poor job on the chapter about front end design, which is the most important part of electronic communication. Despite the negatives it is a great book to read for any hobbyist that has experience in AC circuits.

RF design can either be understood from first principles through Maxwell's equations (wave theory) or from circuit analysis through the basic passive and active electronic components. This book takes the latter approach because it is much easier and far more practical for building actual circuits. Also the mathematics can be held to a minimum with this approach. One of the main reasons the first edition of this book was so popular was the emphasis on reading and understanding Smith charts. This provides a very quick visual entry into RF design without the heavy emphasis on differential equations and boundary conditions. The book under review is the second edition, which updates the (now more than 25 years old) first edition with two new chapters on RF Front-End Design (chapter 8) and RF Design Tools (chapter 9). Chapter 8 covers modern radio front-end design including sections on intermodulation, receiver architecture and software defined radios. Chapter 9 gives an overview of design tools before going into a detailed case study of IEEE 802.11a in CMOS using Analog Office software. It is instructive to see both how many things have changed and yet how the basic principles have remained the same. Even though the individual NPN transistors mentioned in the original chapters are long gone (replaced by highly integrated op-amps and LNAs), the passive components are still used in designs every day. And the transistor design issues (S parameters, transistor biasing) still apply today in the multi-GHz range just as they did in the MHz range a quarter of a century ago. Today's integrated designs might include an on-chip inductor created with rectangular traces wrapped into a "coil" instead of an actual physical coil and on-chip capacitors and resistors, but the principles remain the same. In fact, the performance of passive on-chip capacitors and inductors is normally orders of magnitude worse than is required for high performance designs. Thus the physical components are still widely used today. There are a number of RF circuit design topics missing from this book, including oscillators, distributed elements, microstrip and slot line designs for GHz ranges and advanced integrated circuit topics for CMOS and GaAs radio design, but these would not fit into an introductory text such as this one. Another item the book doesn't emphasize is the wide variety of online tools available now for RF designers. The website [...] has consolidated a number of links to free tools covering many aspects of RF design mentioned in this book, including a Pi Network calculator, S parameter utility and Smith chart Java tool. In conclusion, this book is ideal for either the RF design hobbyist or professional digital designer who needs to design front end circuits without going back to school. The book has a companion website with high resolution versions of many of the Smith charts in the book, [...]

I had the Bowick's RF Circuit Design for 15 years. It has been useful through the years. Now do I need to get this new edition? Interestingly, Chris Bowick himself does not seem involved in the update of the 2nd edition. I compared the two editions and concluded that the new edition does not add anything substantial and there is no need to get this if you already have the 1st edition. Personally, I object to this type of superficial update of the classics. My rating only reflects the updates in the 2nd edition not the overall content of the book.