Customer Reviews

Solid State Radio Engineering

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

An excellent text for the real world of RF design, covering noise calculations, mixers, oscillators, filters, amplifiers, modulation and demodulation, PLLs, and other aspects of RF communications. Though I personally prefer Hayward's "Introduction to Radio Frequency Design" (especially for its treatment of oscillator circuits), I frequently refer to the Krauss & Bostian text for clarification of concepts and its greater emphasis on different schemes for modulation and demodulation. The treatment of PLLs is rather skimpy, but there are several textbooks specific to that subject (and even they gloss over some aspects).

In conjunction with Bowick's "RF Design" and Hayward's text, the Krauss & Bostian text delivers all the guidance needed for practical RF design.

I used this text book back in the '80s and even then it was considered outdated in some respects. There were rumors then of a second edition which seems to never have materialized. The book stresses Y-parameters for network characterization whereas s-parameters have been the standard since the late '80s. Also circuit examples are too dependent on transformers which in practical circuits are avoided if possible because of the large size and cost.

However, fundamental concepts that don't change with time are covered rather well (e.g. cascaded noise figure, classes of PAs, and modulation).

Still a good reference. For good circuit examples look for a more modern text.

I bought this book several months ago. But I read it sometimes because I'm not serious about this book. Because I xeroxed this book 13 years ago when I used some part of this book in my communication electronics course. But this
text maybe one of the original textbook about RF power amplifier design. Eventhough some author was dead. I think, it is very interesting for me if 2nd edition of this book is appeared on the market to update recent novel circuits for RF power amplifier and design methodology.

What can I say? I laughed, I cried. When he got to the part about class D power amplifiers the suspence was killing me!