[time-nuts] Literature on low noise and HF electronics

Attila Kinali attila at kinali.ch
Sat Feb 11 09:36:01 UTC 2012


On Sat, 11 Feb 2012 04:09:44 -0500
"Charles P. Steinmetz" <charles_steinmetz at lavabit.com> wrote:

> Attila wrote:
> 
> >The recent discussions have made it again clear to me, that i lack
> >a lot of knowledge in electronics. Especially when it comes to
> >the black arts: analog stuff, HF, getting the most ouf of a transistor,
> >or doing it really really low noise.
> >
> >Could someone recomend anything to read that would get me more
> >insights and knowledge on these topics?
> 
> There are a few good textbooks (read, lots of math) on HF and low 
> noise design if you have the math and physics foundation.

Having a master in EE i think i can handle quite a bit of math. ;-)
Unfortunately, having a degree doesn't mean you know anything.
And my experience is that for lots of things i need at work on a daily
basis, there was no course, not even something mentioning that this
might be something you should know. And as it is, university courses
focus more and more on "communication technologies".
Ie, on either how you design a transistor on a chip to do GHz transmissions
or how you would encode your signal to get trough a noisy channel.
No word on how you get an actuall device build or how you would implement
the nice theoretical signal shape you just calculated...
The most practical course i had, was on digital chip design, where we
learned various practices and a great deal of VHDL. Most of the rest was so
theoretical that i still do not know how to apply them to real world problems.

And now i'm trying to fill that gab.

> The way you presented your request, it sounds as if you may want 
> something more foundational.  

That's one part. I know i lack a lot of basic things, that are part
of the craft. But i also want to learn the special stuff. Eg one of
the books i recently bought was on what forms of noise are present
in low noise oscillators and how to characterise them. Very specialized
book, but i learned a great deal while reading it.

> If so, I would highly recommend The Art 
> of Electronics by Horowitz and Hill

This is already on my to buy list :-)

> and Experimental Methods in RF Design by Hayward, Campbell, and Larkin. 

Thanks, i'll get this one too.

Thanks a lot

			Attila Kinali

-- 
Why does it take years to find the answers to
the questions one should have asked long ago?



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