The Designer's Guide Community Forum

The Designer's Guide Community Forum
https://designers-guide.org/forum/YaBB.pl
Design >> RF Design >> Getting up to speed in RF
https://designers-guide.org/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1356897400

Message started by Dan Clement on Dec 30^th, 2012, 11:56am

Title: Getting up to speed in RF
Post by Dan Clement on Dec 30^th, 2012, 11:56am

I just changed career paths from principal mixed signal designer to RF applications engineer.

Can the experts in this forum provide good references for coming up to speed on the basics of:
- RF architectures and design specs and parameters
- PCB design including RF and analog
- antennas and matching networks
- zigbee and 802.15.4 "for dummies", or something easier to dive into than the standards

Thanks!

Title: Re: Getting up to speed in RF
Post by RFICDUDE on Dec 30^th, 2012, 6:28pm

Interesting career change!

A few books that come to mind are

- RF Microelectronics, Behzad Razavi, Prentice Hall. There is a new 2nd edition which I assume is better or more comprehensive than the first edition.

- RF Circuit Design, Chris Bowick, Newnes/Elsevier 2008. This is a good primer introduction to RF concepts including matching networks, Smith chart and LC filters.

- RF System Design of Transceivers for Wireless Communications, Qizheng Gu, Springer. Decent RF transceiver system design walk through for superhet and direct conversion WCDMA FDD systems.

I'm sure there are some references for Zigbee, but I don't know what they are off hand.

PCB design is mostly about signal integrity, controlled impedance lines, EM coupling, and supply decoupling. I don't know of a good reference that addresses all the issues. The amount of design and modeling effort depends a lot on the system specs. Tight RF or HF I/O performance specs or high isolation requirements can demand a lot of detailed EM modeling and verification.

Modeling/measurement of external components used for matching and decoupling networks can demand a lot of attention too.

Title: Re: Getting up to speed in RF
Post by Dan Clement on Jan 23^rd, 2013, 5:21am

Thanks for the tips! I actually purchased a couple of the suggested titles. I can't wait to dig in!

Title: Re: Getting up to speed in RF
Post by loose-electron on Jan 24^th, 2013, 3:25pm

RFICDUDE wrote on Dec 30^th, 2012, 6:28pm:

Modelling and simulation at the board level?

Not so much as at the chip level in my opinion.

When I am designing a chip I live on a simulator.
When I design a PCB I will do hand calculation estimates of critical things and then go build it.
If its not perfect, PCB respin is small money and more cost-time effective.