Carl J. Weissman
The Essential Guide to RF and Wireless
Published by Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458, 2001
Paper format, pp. 232, USA, $ 37.50
ISBN 0-13-025962-4
http://www.pearsoneduc.com

In general about the book

This book simplifies the subject of RF electronics with analogies, metaphors, and a minimum of mathematics. Many photographs and figures are included to further help the subject. Unlike other books of its kind, however, it takes a distinctly lighthearted approach to the subject by incorporating witticisms and sarcsm, occasionally directed at the book's hypothetional protagonist: the RF engineer.

The Essential Guide to RF and Wireless takes an overly simplistic approach to the subject matter. In this vein, it accomplishes two main objectives: it provides a conceptual understanding of RF components and wireless systems, and it exposes you to the main vocabulary used in the industry. You can hardly expect understand a topic as complex as wireless communications without first learning its lingua franca.

The book have three Parts with 7 Chapters and two appendix. If you are new in the subject of RF, you should read all of Part 1 with two Chapters 1 and 2, as the rest of the book builds on the fundamental concepts and vocabulary introduced there as : Transmitters and Receivers, Signals, The frequency of various activities, Loss and Gain, Wideband and Narrow Band, Match etc. The Part two (Ch. 3, 4 and 5) deal with RF hardware. In Ch. 3 there are Basic System Components as: Antennas, Amplifiers, Filters, Mixers. In Ch. 4 are other components: Switches, Attenuators, Couplers, etc. In Ch. 5 covers the circuits which primarily used in RF systems and industry with different technology and different modulation as Signal Processing in different modulators.

The Part 3 deals with RF Systems as Broadcasting, Radar and Satellite Communications in Ch. 6. In Ch 7 a new World of Wireless with Point-to-Point Microwave, Wireless Local Loop, a new technology- Spread Spectrum and Mobile Telephony.

This book is intended for nontechnical people who know absolutely nothing about RF, but need to or just want to explore the RF systems und component as the nontechnical managers, sales administrator, distribution specialist, financial analysts, and technical writers etc. Also it can be used by the students in first one semester course for first learning of RF technique.