The Principles Underlying Radio Communication | Hacker News Reader

The Principles Underlying Radio Communication

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79 pointsmindcrime16 comments

The U.S. military has a lot of informative publications such as this. They’re usually pretty easy to read once you find the relevant section. Those interested in this one might also like Naval Telecommunications Procedures [1]. It has a lot of administrative and Navy-specific information, but chapter 5 covers radio communication, including satellite communication (unclassified of course).

Edit: The Naval Electricity and Electronics Training Series (NEETS) [2] is good as well.

1. https://info.publicintelligence.net/USNavy-NTP4E.pdf

2. https://www.hnsa.org/manuals-documents/2575-2/

On a related note, the Federation of American Scientists maintains a really fascinating archive of unclassified military documents, which includes a lot of this kind of stuff (plus all sorts of other interesting documents). I think their archive tends towards slightly newer documents though. Or maybe I just haven't skimmed it thoroughly enough.

https://irp.fas.org/doddir/

It is an excellent short article that addresses a few key areas of how EM radiation is created.

Very nice article.

FYI - The author of the article has also written a longer book expanding on the above theme named Electromagnetics Explained: A Handbook for Wireless/ RF, EMC, and High-Speed Electronics.

What I've read of this is super readable to me. I really like the practical, matter-of-fact communication style.

This "Feynman" type of communication is really what should run through the education system

I have the hardcover version of this book. Good book.

Also an example of how older books are better written for a broader audiences than most technical books today. It really shouldn't be that hard but it is.

Basically today they are written for the author's own ego or for a small elite group of peers and NOT for anyone with more modest knowledge. Pretty much a waste of time writing at all in many cases.

I think people has broader education plus only top-flight people went to college so that resulted in similar broader abilities like simply writing well and having clear ideas and explanations.

This is why I have nearly as many books written before 1950 as written after. The best explanations come from older books written long ago.

For perspective the first commercial radio station in the USA went on the air in late 1920. It was a societal revolution in information speed versus the telegraph->newspaper mode which was in itself a revolution.

I often wonder how many lay people understand that wifi, cell phone, GPS etc are "radio" communication.

Reminds me of Dover textbooks.

Do you mean the MIT Radiation Laboratory/Rad Lab series that came out after WWII? Many of these were issued in Dover edition books. I still have some and still refer to them (especially vol 23 — Microwave Receivers/S. N. Van Voorhis/1948).

https://web.mit.edu/klund/www/weblatex/node7.html

https://archive.org/details/mit-rad-lab-series-version-3

Just general physics/math Dover reprints. They share similar style to the one OP posted.

Yeah, it's interesting to see the original 1948 publications. My uni library had a set but for some reason the covers were a reddy-brown color. All my Dover reprints are softcover and had new designs on the front.

Even now, decades after I first encountered it, I find the scope and breadth of this Rad Lab series quite mindboggling. What was achieved by Fredrick Terman, Vannevar Bush et al between 1941-45 was truly remarkable. Shame the series isn't better known these days as it documents a true milestone in engineering history.

(1922)

The "principles" probably haven't changed that much; but those were indeed exciting times to be involved in tech, even as an amateur. (Today it's mostly about microcontrollers, MicroPython, sensors, IOT, and robotics.)

(Today it's mostly about microcontrollers, MicroPython, sensors, IOT, and robotics.)

Not that that stuff isn't exciting in its own right. :-)

A "pamphlet" with 636 pages!

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