The Electronics of Radio [Paperback]

David Rutledge (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521646456 | ISBN-13: 978-0521646451 | Publication Date: August 13, 1999 | Edition: Pap/Dskt

This innovative book provides a stimulating introduction to analog electronics by analyzing the design and construction of a radio transceiver. The author provides essential theoretical background at each step, along with carefully designed laboratory and homework exercises. This structured approach ensures a good grasp of basic electronics as well as an excellent foundation in wireless communications systems. The author begins with a thorough description of basic electronic components and simple circuits. He then describes the key elements of radio electronics, including filters, amplifiers, oscillators, mixers, and antennas. In the laboratory exercises, he leads the reader through the design, construction, and testing of a popular radio transceiver (the NorCal 40A), thereby illustrating and reinforcing the theoretical material. A diskette containing the widely known circuit simulation software, Puff, is included in the book. This book, the first to deal with elementary electronics in the context of radio, can be used as a textbook for introductory analog electronics courses, or for more advanced undergraduate classes on radio-frequency electronics. It will also be of great interest to electronics hobbyists and radio enthusiasts.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Overall, this text is worthy of serious study for the care with which it combines theory and practice, and for the scope of its development from lowly, Ohm's law beginnings to substantive radio design incorporating gain and frequency stabilization." Contemporary Physics

Book Description

This innovative book provides a stimulating introduction to analog electronics by analyzing the design and construction of a radio transceiver. Essential theoretical background is given at each step, along with carefully designed laboratory and homework exercises. This structured approach ensures a good grasp of basic electronics as well an excellent foundation in wireless communications systems.The Electronics of Radio can be used as a textbook for introductory analog electronics courses, or for more advanced undergraduate classes on radio-frequency electronics. It will also be of great interest to electronics hobbyists and radio enthusiasts.

Product Details

• Paperback: 452 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press; Pap/Dskt edition (August 13, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521646456
• ISBN-13: 978-0521646451
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #76,598 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #43 in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Radio > General Broadcasting

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

77 of 77 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book for the classroom or hobbyist, December 3, 1999

By 

Doug Heacock - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Electronics of Radio (Paperback)

If you're a build-it-yourself amateur radio hobbyist with a thirst for information about how it all works, this book should be on your shelf. It is somewhat less math-intensive than Wes Hayward's classic, _Introduction to RF Circuit Design_, but more practical than most other books I've seen on the subject. The book approaches the the topic by taking the reader step-by-step through the inner workings of the NorCal 40A, a popular QRP (low-power) HF transceiver kit, which means that you'll get the most from the book if you also have the kit (or a completed NorCal 40A). The author presents each section of the radio's design and discusses each in detail, with many circuit examples. The author discusses the pertinent radio or electronics theory in the context of how each part of the radio works. There are also many practical exercises and tests that the reader can perform on the radio, either as it is being built or after it is finished. Having a NorCal 40A isn't a requirement, and most of the book is useful, even apart from the kit construction, since many of the exercises and test procedures can be applied to other radio circuits with little trouble. The book is organized to make it very useful as a college-level engineering text, but the hobbyist shouldn't be scared off by the math and theory. All in all, this is a great new book for the amateur radio community.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent textbook for serious radio amateur operators, January 28, 2003

By 

Frank Chen (Taipei Taiwan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Electronics of Radio (Hardcover)

Our library ordered this book last year and since then I
have been reading on and off when I get spare time.

Beening quite a novice on radio electronics and a amateur radio
operator(bx2ah, ex-bv2wn) in Taipei, Taiwan I am very much
into any underlying building blocks of the radio art. This book
is particular useful for laymen with only modest college math
background.

If you are an serious amateur radio operator who wish to learn
more about the workings of your ham rig/antenna,
I wholeheartedly highly recommend this brilliant book
to you.

frank chen bx2ah, ex-bv2wn

17 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A decent book, November 11, 2005

By 

Phillip (Pasadena, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Electronics of Radio (Paperback)

This book is the sole textbook for the two-term intro ee course EE20 at Caltech. Having gone through every page of this thing quite thoroughly, I can say that it is ok at what it attempts to do. It has decent instructions on how to build and test a NorCal 40A radio. Having a well-stocked lab and lots of test equipment helps you get what you should out of the book, and I'd say it's almost essential to actually build the radio to get everything you can out of this book. Beyond the build, this book, and its course, are a sort of intro to circuit analysis, although in this aspect I find it lacking, with brief descriptions of techniques and circuits that either are not clear or leave too much out of the discussion. For more basic/general E&M a book such as Physics for Scientists and Engineers by Serway and Jewett would be far more useful, and for more advanced circuit analysis techniques, something along the lines of Microelectronic Circuits by Sedra and Smith is a good choice. This book would be good for those interested in the inner workings of a radio and some bits and pieces of RF stuff, however I must emphasize that the building of the radio (which would be fairly expensive) and testing of it are where the real value of this book lie. I must also emphasize that the resulting radio is pretty fiddly and not a practical piece of kit. However, if you buy this book and don't build the radio or do the exercises, then you probably bought the wrong book.