[deweywsu]

I always wanted to get into RF design, but couldn't find it within the mega company I work for (we integrate more than we design at the component level). RF design has always been a bit of black magic, even as an EE. Other than some really great books from ARRL in the amateur radio arena, I haven't found too many good "as it really works in the working world" references. Can anyone point at any good books and/or sites that go into detail about this fascinating field?

[nestes]

I would actually go so far to say as I am not aware of any good "as it really works" references. Handbooks exist, but they're pretty expensive.

Since you have an EE background, I would recommend a few strategies (in any order, except 0 should be first if you have major deficiencies):

0) Brush up on some of your math if you need to. Linear algebra (just up to Eigenvector/Eigenvalue), vector calculus, differential equations. Mostly just understanding the concepts is OK, because the major derivations for RF engineering are relatively simple problems. That said, RF engineering is just one big love letter to linear algebra.

1) Read Pozar, as another commenter have suggested, but you don't need to cover-to-cover it. You absolutely must know some network theory, the basics of transmission lines (characteristic impedance, propagation, loaded driving point impedance), and simple matching techniques (basic RF design is about 75% just making sure power goes where you want it to). Beyond that you can pick and choose depending precisely on what you're doing.

2) Read older papers (1940s-1980s depending on topic) on whatever you're interested in. They're going to assume relatively little starting information. The only caveats are that notation has changed and that a lot of the design techniques, while still valid, were more useful when simulators weren't readily available (i.e. they assume a really strong mathematical background).

3) Stay low frequency as much as possible early on. <6 GHz for sure, ideally lower. This makes things a lot cheaper (metrology, components) and makes mechanical tolerances less critical. Stuff just gets less "fiddly". There's of course a tradeoff where things start to get pretty big at low (10-100's MHz) frequencies.

4) Tear apart anything you can get your hands on -- broken metrology equipment for one. Try and figure out why people are doing what they're doing. Just because a system's cheap doesn't mean they aren't using some cool tricks.

[stephen_g]

Sorry not sure what books would be good (I learnt the bits and bobs I know mostly on the job from grey-beards!) but I always like to chime in when people talk about black magic that part of learning about RF it's not that crazy - just unintuitive if you think in terms of the lower frequency and DC stuff - because once you lean about it, it basically turns out that really low frequency stuff and DC are basically a special case of RF, and you can see the RF effects in all sorts of things, like any decently fast UART or other signals.

So yeah, I would encourage any EE to look into it, because having an idea about RF can make any electronic design better (especially around things like EMC!)

[ijustlovemath]

While not an RF book per se, High Speed Digital design does a great job of spanning the gap from EE undergrad to the basics of RF as it relates to digital design. I'd also recommend brushing up on more advanced E&M, eg T{E,M} modes and antenna design if you haven't looked at them in a while

[deweywsu]

Thank you for the recommendation!

[willis936]

If you haven't already, read Microwave Engineering (Pozar).