Chapter 1
Introduction
The twenty-first century is the wireless century. In the near future, it is very likely that most electronic devices will include some wireless functionality. If we look at the job market, known brands which seem have nothing to do with antennas, such as Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and so on, are all recruiting engineers with antenna knowledge. On the other hand, there are not that many antenna engineers out there. The root cause of the shortage of antenna engineers can be traced all the way back to the university. The cornerstone of antenna engineering is electromagnetics (EM), which is a quite abstract class and involves a lot of mathematics. The world unveiled by electromagnetics is a four-dimensional one, which includes three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension. To most students, the many new concepts introduced in the class are counterintuitive and confusing. As a logical consequence of natural selection, the EM major is removed by most students from their list of favorites.
People like to think of antennas as a black box of magic. The explanations given by antenna engineers are always so vague and it seems that they never give people a definitive answer. It is easy to come to the conclusion that even designing a simple antenna requires years of experience. The truth is that if there were an appropriate book which presented all the required information, most electronic engineers who have studied some electromagnetic theory in university could ...
