Energy Fundamentals of Radio

Chapter 7Selected Topics in Electromagnetic Theory

If you hadn’t already before you picked up this book, after reading a chapter or two you can appreciate the difficulty facing a newcomer who seeks to understand wireless links. There are just so many topics: linear system theory, circuit theory, thermodynamics, probability and statistics, information theory, digital signal processing...and that’s just so far. Well, now we arrive at another big one: electricity and magnetism (E&M). There is no getting around this.

So, what to do? There are many long books on E&M. It is fine to argue that the following is a carefully curated subset of topics, a minimum needed to understand wireless links. The author certainly believes that to be true. But for the purists, the physicists, wouldn’t they be better served first by a fuller study of E&M, untainted by application? And even for the more pragmatic engineers, wouldn’t they too be more versatile with a more general grounding in this critical topic?

The answer here almost certainly varies from person to person. For the author, the understanding of general physical principles has always been enhanced and enriched by an intense focus on performance-based application. The resulting depth of understanding naturally leads to versatility. If you are like this, this chapter is written for you.

If you are not like this, then you are invited to an experiment. Give both approaches a try. Dust off your old E&M textbook, or find an online course, and ...