If you have *any* interest in RF you should read this! - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / rf-microwave

author: rhb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 09, 2019, 04:18:28 pm
content: Planar Microwave EngineeringThomas H. LeeCambridge 2004I stumbled across mention of this somehow. There is an old thread from 2016 that mentions it, but without really giving it the attention it deserves.I took an undergraduate degree in literature before moving into geosciences to make a living. I also have a rather large technical library and have been interested in RF for my entire life. So I care very much about good technical exposition and RF in particular. Especially after recently buying several expensive books which are unreadable because of the bad writing. Useful as a reference, yes. But sit and read them cover to cover? Not only no, but hell no!This is hands down the best book on RF I have ever seen. The author writes to satisfy the most novice hobbyist and the most advanced PhD. Despite the seeming impossibility of doing that he pulls it off with grace and humor. If you want the math it's there. If you don't, you can skip it. And he doesn't force you to go flipping through the book to find eq. 2.42. He references it, but also repeats it so you can continue reading without having to hunt for the equation or figure.The only other electronics related book that comes close is "The Art of Electronics" by Horowitz and Hill. I would not presume to rank one above the other. H&H give passing mention to the issues posed by RF and fast logic. Lee lays it all out in just short of 850 pages. And there is a website with simulation and design software. It even includes a PDF of a 350 page biography of James Clerk Maxwell published in 1882.I'm only about a quarter way through. So please excuse me while I go read.

author: mark03
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 09, 2019, 07:53:06 pm
content: It's on my camelcamelcamel price watch already, based on the other thread. Still waiting to find a used copy at a decent price.

author: rfeecs
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 09, 2019, 08:59:27 pm
content: Dr. James C. Rautio of Sonnet Software did a digital preservation of "The Life of James Clerk Maxwell". It's available on the Sonnet website, along with some articles about Maxwell:http://www.sonnetsoftware.com/resources/maxwell-bio.htmlSonnet also has a free, limited edition of their EM simulator:http://www.sonnetsoftware.com/products/lite/

author: Rohde_TestWalker
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: April 09, 2019, 09:29:09 pm
content: I've found biographies of the "greats" to be very illuminating. Maxwell is now on my list, thanks @rfeecs! I'm currently reading Tesla: Man out of Time (Margaret Cheney). I'd highly recommend it as part of any "how did we get to this point" learning curve, but it's also an awakening to the outright hand-to-hand combat of ac vs dc and Edison vs Tesla (and Westinghouse). It's also a view into the world of a man of amazing intellectual capacity, yet who struggled mightily to make a living. The contradiction may still hold true today (would Wozniak be anybody without Jobs?). There is something deeper at play besides making money, though having both are good:) His visions needed to be realized. It was a drive beyond materialism.Anyway, back to RF. My own company (Rohde & Schwarz) brought the "best of the best" to the Valley recently to dig into the issues around RF and testing in the age of 5G. I knew it would be good, but even I was surprised at the depth -- the length that engineers would stay engaged with a speaker, even while lunch was being served!:) The presentations are cutting edge and are available here:http://bit.ly/2I6p85SHoller if you have a hard time getting access.I guess it's the bookend to @rhb's mention of Lee's "Planar Microwave Engineering": fundamentals, in a modern context.

author: rhb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 09, 2019, 09:36:16 pm
content: Both are part of the book CD-ROM which you actually download from the cambridge.org website for the book now. The book is actually "on demand" printed. So it's a glued binding hardcover. But the print quality is good.Aside from a 1-5 GHz slotted line, Lee tells how to make a crystal set by oxidizing a copper plated penny and suggests a number of other semiconductors besides CuO to try. The book has a tremendous sense of joy in radio and electronics to it.The book is based on course notes for a upper level graduate course at Stanford for which you have to design and build an FM transceiver and demonstrate successful operation.

author: sundance
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 10, 2019, 12:59:14 pm
content: (removed)

author: sundance
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 10, 2019, 01:20:07 pm
content: Didn't look pirated to me, but I removed the link nevertheless...P.S. The platform seems to be absolutely legit:QuoteBut maybe that paper was uploaded without the authors' approval...

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 10, 2019, 01:22:12 pm
content: Quote from: RoGeorge on March 03, 2019, 10:23:02 am

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 10, 2019, 01:32:04 pm
content: I did not see the book but when i buy a book on planar microwave engineering i expect it to be about planar microwave engineering, not about every RF thing under the sun. There is a lot one can do in RF before even hitting a need for planar microwave knowledge. So i am sceptical about the *any* part of the Subject.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 10, 2019, 01:47:10 pm
content: Quote from: ebastler on April 10, 2019, 01:08:24 pmWin Hilldidpost a URL to the book's PDF; without re-downloading it, the PDF appears to still be there.I don't know whether that was the the URL you posted. I have refrained from repeating the URL

author: rhb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 10, 2019, 10:26:26 pm
content: Quote from: RoGeorge on April 10, 2019, 01:22:12 pmThe whole book is like that. I'm going to be spending a *lot* of time at the nearest university library downloading papers from IEEE that are referenced in the footnotes. And probably buying several of the books he cites frequently as references for the derivation of various approximations.He presents enough of the mathematics to make the concepts clear and provides references for the details he omits. The sort of thing an R&D engineer would want to have on the shelf to avoid the tedium of deriving it.RF is many shades of grey. He makes a point of providing order of magnitude estimates of various effects, particularly parasitics so the reader can judge whether they matter in the frequency range they are working.I've read a half dozen or so books on RF cover to cover. I learned more from this one than from all the rest combined because of the quality of the presentation. He devotes 30 pages to directional couplers as part of a 50 page section on splitters, combiners and couplers. I actually now understand the principles as well as how to design and evaluate them. My other RF books spent a few pages giving the same very vague descriptions.I want to split a 20 ps rise time pulse 8 ways to time propagation delays in FPGA DSP blocks. I now know how. It's not RF, but it is none the less. Very fiddly sub-centimeter microwave RF.

author: aneevuser
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 12, 2019, 08:59:41 am
content: This looks to be ideal for someone like me: clueless about but interested in RF. However:a) the title seems to be very misleading so I'd never have noticed the book without a thread like thisb) in the UK, they seem to want about 80 of our English pounds for it - that's insane - almost no one is going to buy it on spec at that price. Surely they'd sell far more at a quarter of that price? It can't cost anywhere near 80 quid to print this, surely?

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 12, 2019, 09:16:22 am
content: Quote from: aneevuser on April 12, 2019, 08:59:41 amPrint? No. All the other things necessary to get a book published with a relatively small print run, yes. The price is not high for a specialised academic book.You can see the table of contents, and together with the positive reviews here (and elsewhere?) you will have a good idea of whether it is suitable for you. The only way to get a better idea would be to turn the pages in a bookshop. ("Daddy, what's a bookshop?")I suspect that if you have more than a passing interest in the subject, you would be willing to spend £80 merely to save a couple of hours of your time.

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 12, 2019, 11:24:23 am
content: Quote from: aneevuser on April 12, 2019, 08:59:41 amMaybe this is not the first book for RF first steps. IMO the book is not for absolute beginners. It is not all just tales and stories, like the introductory history chapter linked above.See for yourself a few samples with random pages from the book:https://www.google.com/search?q=Planar+Microwave+Engineering+google+booksQuote from: tggzzz on April 12, 2019, 09:16:22 amhttps://books.google.com/books?id=uoj3IWFxbVYCIf you scroll down the page at the Table of Contents, there are random active links to chapters of the book, with samples of pages to browse.

author: aneevuser
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 12, 2019, 11:55:05 am
content: Quote from: tggzzz on April 12, 2019, 09:16:22 amI'd say that it is indeed pretty high even by those standards - I have many specialised academic texts, mainly in maths and physics, which will run you far less.QuoteWell, two points:a) I have been burnt too many times in the past buying books on recommendation to do so againb) my funds are currently very limited, and while I will splash out 80 quid on a book if necessary, it's going to have to be a classic for me to do so. Certainly what I've seen via google books has been promising, but I've been mistaken in the past (and yeah I'd prefer to see it in a bookshop, but none easily accessible would have it - I'll look into inter library loans though).

author: aneevuser
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 12, 2019, 12:00:39 pm
content: Quote from: RoGeorge on April 12, 2019, 11:24:23 amThanks for the warning, but I'm not really an absolute beginner - I'm just clueless about RF electronics. My background is really maths and theoretical physics though I also studied electronics at one stage of my life. I used to be comfortable thinking about radiation patterns of Hertzian dipoles and the like, but that was getting on for 40 years ago, so I've forgotten most of it now sadly.

author: 0culus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 12, 2019, 09:13:27 pm
content: This book is definitely on my buy list. Annoying that it's a textbook and thus gets the highway robbery price. I also recently just found a ca 1990 copy of the ARRL UHF/Microwave Experimenter's Manual. Lot of good practical stuff in there, from thumbing through it.

author: rhb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 12, 2019, 10:46:27 pm
content: The demise of the bookstore is *very* frustrating. You can thank Jeff Bezos for that. My last trip to California to visit my sister I went over to Berkley to browse bookstores. But there were no technical books. Stanford had a "to die for" bookstore the last time I attended a consortium meeting. After the Berkley experience I called to check before going down. It was gone.Henry Ott wrote what people said was a wonderful book on EMI/EMC, so I bought a copy. Damn thing is unreadable. He couldn't write a good explanation of a hammer! After 50 pages I gave up reading it. There's a lot of good data there, but it's strictly shelfware. Lee's book is at the complete opposite end of the spectrum.Book prices in the US went up by a factor of 4 in two years after the IRS ruled that you could not depreciate inventory. American companies brought in skips and threw all the spare parts in the skips to be recycled. I met a typewriter repairman who had worked for one of the major OEMs. He said when he saw it he wanted to cry. Good machines became junk for lack of a $1 part.Don Lancaster wrote passionately about "book on demand" 30 years ago. Well. it's here. The UK seller I bought my copy of "Planar Microwave Engineering" from did not have a copy. They faked shipping it, but it actually shipped 2 weeks later as attested by the customs declaration. But it solves the problem of books for which there are only 5000 buyers over 20 years.

author: 0culus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 12, 2019, 10:56:46 pm
content: I do like having a real book in my hands; it is a shame that bookstores are either disappearing or going corporate.

author: rhb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 12, 2019, 11:05:31 pm
content: I'll read a 10 page PDF on screen. But 100+ pages I print double sided and bind with binder clips with the arms detached.

author: 0culus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 12, 2019, 11:12:34 pm
content: I have a couple of document stands that I inherited from an office mate at school (he was a cool dude, first job out of school was working at HP in Silicon Valley as a software developer in the early 1970s). Sadly he passed away a couple years back.The document stands are very useful for holding up printed out documents while you work as well as books that can be convinced to lay flat.

author: aneevuser
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 13, 2019, 08:01:28 am
content: Quote from: rhb on April 12, 2019, 10:46:27 pmThis is why I'm not keen to drop 80 quid on a book I haven't had in my hands - the number of authors who know their subject but can't write just about equals the number of authors who can write but don't know their subject. And online snippets can be very misleading - I've been burned in the past when I've bought based on Amazon "look inside" excerpts.But as for physical book sellers - the internet has been a double edged sword. I live in a smallish ruralish place, where you'd struggle to find a technical book under any circumstances. But I can now at least examine some parts of them via the internet - it's a pity that it's been at the expense of the big bookshops in university towns and such like. Maybe you'll still find a good range of technical books in somewhere like Foyles, in London, but elsewhere it's slim pickings.

author: aneevuser
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 13, 2019, 08:05:08 am
content: Quote from: rhb on April 12, 2019, 11:05:31 pmI find that I struggle to read from screens at all. For some reason, I can't concentrate properly on the information unless I reading it from a book in my hands - I have no idea why, but my mind wanders far too easily when I'm reading a pdf on a screen.

author: worsthorse
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2019, 03:08:47 pm
content: Thanks for the pointer to Lee's book.Having been disappointed too many times with the price/performance of university textbooks, I've come to depend on interlibrary loans to preview expensive books before I invest in them. My city library has access to worldcat and will try to get any book I can find using the system. Sadly, but predictably, that does not include ebooks.So I have a copy ofPlanar Microwave Engineeringon request now.I also givetoThe Art of Electronicsthough I don't imagine it is for everyone. Another good text isGrob's Basic Electronicsfor circuit design basics, with a focus on BJTs. There's an international edition available that makes it quite affordable.

author: worsthorse
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2019, 03:20:42 pm
content: Quote from: rhb on April 12, 2019, 10:46:27 pmUnfortunately there is often little correlation between accounting economics and common sense. Among the other ways I have wasted time, I earned a masters degree in industrial administration (Carnegie Mellon's version of the MBA). In our first finance class, the second thing we learned was,don't make financial decisions based on tax consequences, a rule that was completely ignored in every other class on the curriculum.There comes a point when old tech really is just salvage -- for example, keeping a warehouse full of the parts required to maintain horse powered windmills -- but that point is often many years after accountants decide to empty that warehouse or marketing folks decide it is time to ship something new. So we lose usable tech and hundreds of tons of metal, semiconductors, and the like get dumped into landfills.

author: bsfeechannel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2019, 04:59:52 am
content: Don't miss the interview with the authorDr. Thomas H. Lee on The Amp Hour #459. His approach to teaching is what is missing in academic courses, IMO.

author: aurelZ
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2019, 07:11:50 am
content: Well we /you can read 1000 books and you then know nothing .If you build something then you will know something..I build numerous wifi antennas from very simple to fractal.

author: SilverSolder
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2019, 07:58:39 am
content: Quote from: rhb on April 12, 2019, 11:05:31 pmIonlyread PDFs these days - my entire library is portable and with me at all times.The ability to carry an entire library with you is surely a modern day miracle?

author: vinlove
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2019, 08:29:51 am
content: What about the book,Practical Electronics for Inventors?Is that book any useful for RF and general Electronics?

author: frankmhowell
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: October 05, 2019, 08:33:11 pm
content: That makes cute rhetoric but falls on its face in terms of both logic and my experience as a Professor for 40 years. If you actually read 1,000 books and then know nothing, you’re a very terrible reader. And, many jump into building something without the theory of operation and quit in frustration b/c it doesn’t work...either at all or poorly. Thomas Lee, on his aforementioned text, blends an admirable BALANCE between the two.

author: frankmhowell
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: October 05, 2019, 08:38:54 pm
content: I have gone in this direction, too, everywhere possible. Sine printed materials I do not have in digital form. I have all of my digital documents in Dropbox which gets replicated on a separate HD on my workbench PC so changes (e.g., when I download, say, an article using my iPad, saving it to Dropbox.) it’s there wherever I am with internet access.

author: rhb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 05, 2019, 11:25:07 pm
content: I'm very happy to have PDFs, but I don't enjoy reading 800 pages sitting in front of a computer. I much prefer a recliner with plenty of clipboards with pads of paper if I want to make a calculation.It would be nice to have my entire 5000+ volume library on a 9" x 12" screen tablet with 300 dpi resolution, but as I have no desire to go anywhere it's far more trouble than it is worth. Though it would prevent my accumulating several 2 ft stacks of books by my chair.The wonderful thing about Thomas H. Lee is his sheer joy in the subject. Albert Malvino has that also in his book, "Electronic Principles".Sadly, I see ever greater inability to use books as tools for learning. Many people prefer a video presentation. The problem with those is the information data rate is very low relative to what someone who can read 400+ words per minute can absorb.Of course, the real impediment to learning is the notion "I'll learn that when I need to know." You can only understand things in context of what you already know. The clasic example was the WW II cargo cult in New Guinea. As they only understood animals, when a C-47 crashed, they built a decoy of reeds to lure another one. I've never been able to predict what I needed to know, so I've learned everything I could.