antenna-theory.com

[miko1977]

Hello guys and girls

This is my first topic and i am happy to be a member of this forum. I am Physicist and i really want to get into antenna engineering. After a glance on some antenna books (Balanis, Krauss) i realized that in order to become a good antenna engineer you "need to know your math". So my question is, what are the mathematics someone needs to know in order to be competent as an antenna engineer? Can you suggest specific books, video lectures or anything else to fill the gap regarding math for engineers? Thank you in advance.
Minas

[admin]

Miko,

That's an interesting question. Let's take maxwell's equations for instance. Complicated vector-differential equations that describe electromagnetics. Would an advanced knowledge of vector calculus and differential equations help you understand these?

In my opinion - not really. The equations are so complicated that the ideas are hidden within the mathematics. They are best understood at an intuitive level - what do they mean? What are the implications? What can we say about them? How many physicists do you know that can walk you through each equations and describe the implications and how they produce radiation? I submit to you: not a lot. So I wrote a very minimal math website on maxwell's equations: www.maxwells-equations.com to explain these equations at the proper intuitive level.

Now, for antenna engineering. If you're working with antenna design, as in the consumer electronics space, the advanced math that is in some of the antenna texts is not useful. You're never going to look at a problem and starts solving integrals or complex differential equations. Never. What you do need is to understand materials, the roll of wavelength, and the principles behind electromagnetics. A lot of this stuff is simple arithmetic - i.e. if the permittivity is 4 and the frequency is 900 MHz what is the size of a half wavelength dipole?

The math is useful if you are writing the numerical codes or EM solvers that are commonly used in industry, both defense, consumer electronics and university. I generally feel numerical solutions don't increase understanding, and are typically a "stupid man's" tool to avoid thinking. But some people swear by it.

Anyway, my thesis is this: just because the math is in the common antenna texts does not mean it is useful to accomplished antenna engineers.

Peace

[miko1977]

[Alan0354]

I am new here....like today's new. Maybe it is not even my place to reply as I have only spent a few months on antenna theory. I did look at the two books you mentioned, in fact, I am using both books as my primary text books.

I made a goal to study antennas and looked into the requirements. It's all electromagnetics particularly EM wave propagation to me. So I did spent a few years studying electromagnetics, transmission lines theory, phasors to prepare myself for this. To study that, I did spent time reviewing basic calculus, studied vector calculus, ODE and PDE. But if you are a physicist, you should have all this mastered already!!! You should be able to dive right in. I don't understand why you find this hard. Yes, it has it's special terms, specifics and all, but I glance through a lot of the materials, maybe I don't know enough to even comment on this, but it's all electromagnetics to me, .

I studied one book in Electrodynamics by Griffiths that is for physics major, they don't get into phasor, transmission lines and TE and TM as much. Maybe that's the area you should study into. Get an Engineering Electromagnetics text book like:

Field and Wave Electromagnetics by David K Cheng. That a very good book in engineering electromagnetics that Griffiths don't cover.

[arka]

I agree to most of the things you said in the reply to the original post, but i beg to differ on "I generally feel numerical solutions don't increase understanding, and are typically a "stupid man's" tool to avoid thinking. But some people swear by it" .. It is always a "stupid man's" tool to avoid thinking, when implemented blindly on a computer program without understanding the relevance of anything.. But being a Computational EM student, it is not only about coding blindly.. We know the rigors which we need to go through to understand what Electric Field Integral Equations are and how the basic electromagnetics is understood and incorporated in it, how material properties are taken care of, how boundary conditions are put in the formulation. To do the entire formulation understanding it and implementing, needs a lot of stuff, and its not that simple way to avoid thinking. Otherwise, there wouldn't have been any need of CEM engineers in the world, a computer science personnel could have done the job.