Book reviews are a wonderful way to spread the word about upcoming titles and find out what others really think! We were lucky to have ITS UK review Matt Morgan's latest book, Principles of RF and Microwave Design. Read the full review here.

Book review – Matthew A. Morgan – Principles of RF and Microwave Design

By Jerome Clayton, SNC Lavalin Atkins

Principles of RF and Microwave Design is a great book that is useful to anyone irrespective of where they are in their RF (radio, microwave, mmWave) career, from student to RF circuit design practitioner.

The book is well structured and starts off with a strong and comprehensive introduction to fields and waves using Maxwell’s equations. At this early stage, the author also introduces the reader to the mathematically rigorous and illustratively rich approach that is continued throughout the book. Matthew A. Morgan builds on these fundamental equations by deriving and explaining a wide range of relevant laws and theories which goes on to guide the reader through a diverse toolbox of standard circuit elements and practices that simplifies RF design by not having to painstakingly work through Maxwell’s equations for every design. He also explains how certain design changes can lead to different RF behaviours.

The next few chapters explains the application of circuit elements and building: lumped elements; transmission lines; network parameters; transformations and identities; impedance matching; waveguides; launchers and transmissions; antennas and quasitropes. The last chapters of the book delve into information on how energy transfers between the previously described circuit elements along with their applications in designs. These chapters are: flat frequency components; frequency selective components; amplifiers; and frequency conversion.

An important aspect of the book is how the author provides a balanced view between lumped elements and transmission lines, encouraging the reader to choose the most appropriate idealisation based on the application they are designing for.

As you would expect from a book in this field, there are a good amount of drawings which assist the reader, including circuit diagrams, signal‑flow graphs, component diagrams, performance graphs and Smith charts. These are further accompanied by tables containing useful formulae and expressions.

Despite the book’s versatility, it helps if the reader has a basic understanding of vector calculus, different coordinate systems and Maxwell’s equations as this can help grasp the concepts explained within. There are appendices which provide information on mathematical identities; integral theorems; vector identities; vector operator forms; delta‑wye identities; transmission line identities; and special functions such as Chebyshev polynomials and Bessel functions.

Each chapter concludes with a collection of problems to be solved and references. Despite a strong theme of mathematically deriving theories and formulae useful to the everyday RF design engineer, the problems at the end of each chapter do not have their answers available or enough worked problem examples and herein lies an area where the resource can improve.

Overall, this book is an invaluable resource to any RF and microwave design engineer.

The book can be purchased from Artech House here . Use code SUMMER20 for a 25% discount.