RF design handbook provides test tips

The Practical RF Handbook by Ian Hickman is primarily a design book, published as part of the "EDN Series for Design Engineers," and as a design book, it is clear, concise, and accessible. (EDN is our sister publication that targets the design and development community.)

The first two editions were published in 1993 and 1997. This third edition updates the maximum "RF" (as opposed to microwave) frequency limit from 1000 MHz to beyond 2.5 GHz. In part, says Hickman in his preface, multiple gigahertz frequencies are no longer the sole domain of microwave "plumbers," who wield waveguides and cavity resonators to make their millimeter-wave signals behave. Thanks to advances in surface-mount technology and high-frequency transistors, miniature circuit boards in portable cellular, GPS, and Bluetooth products can readily accommodate 2.5-GHz signals.

The book is organized in such a way that you can jump in where you want, based on your background and interests. If you need a thorough review, you can begin at the beginning—chapter 1 provides the math describing capacitors and inductors, presented with an RF slant. Subsequent chapters present transmission lines, transformers, couplers, active components, and modulation and demodulation techniques. Other chapters describe transmitters, receivers, RF propagation, and antennas.

Of particular note is the 10-page chapter on measurements. It provides a concise description of ways to make CW amplitude measurements (through, or bridging, vs. terminated, and linear vs. RMS). It describes the use of a spectrum analyzer to make harmonic and phase-noise measurements, and it describes when to use scalar or vector network analyzers. It concludes by describing signal generators and synthesizers, and it introduces special-purpose radio-communications test sets, which combine the functions of several stand-alone benchtop instruments into one convenient system.

The book is limited in the number of specific instruments it discusses; for that, you will still need magazines. (Disclosure: The book's publisher is owned by Test & Measurement World's parent company.)