We are excited to announce that our Impedance Matching course is now available on Udemy. Udemy is a "learning aggregation" site offering courses from many different sources. They accept payments in local currencies from around the world, making it easier to sign up for the course, especially if you already have an account with them.
Based on Les Besser's famous RF course material, this program has been reworked and updated to meet the needs of today's engineers looking for online self-paced study. Video lectures are followed by our exclusive online workbooks featuring interactive problem sets and quizzes along with optional supplemental reading for those who wish to explore topics in more depth. This course is the first part of an RF Engineering Certificate program currently under development by Besser Associates.
Learn how to use the Smith Chart matching software on RFMentor in less than 10 minutes!
Use the software right here on RFMentor.com
Online Smith Chart course now available - right here on RFMentor.com!
Reflectometer slide rules were handy for quickly looking up conversions between SWR, return loss, and reflection coefficient. Use this slide rule right on your computer (is this an anachronism?) in any JavaScript enabled web browser!
I've successfully added transmission line elements to the Smith Chart matching web app here on RFMentor.com. These include series, shorted shunt section, and open shunt section. There's a trick you can use to have these transmission line elements use an arbitrary characteristic impedance. The elements adopt the same characteristic impedance as the chart normalization impedance (default is 50 Ohms).
I created a quick Python function to calculate the component values for an impedance match between two real (resistive) terminations using the technique taught in the Introduction to Impedance Matching course. Here is what the code ends up looking like, and it shows how useful Python can be for working as a "quick programmable calculator." In the old days, I might have been tempted to program my old HP48 calculator to crank out the same values. It only took a few minutes to put the code together, which is the beauty of working with Python.
I created a brief video showing what an impedance matching network created using analytical techniques looks like on the Smith Chart. The impedance matching network was created in an exercise that is part of the Introduction to Impedance Matching course.
An early version of the Smith Chart web app is now available to try out. There are a couple of issues that I will be working on initially, such as the frequency entry dialog box appears to be transparent for some reason. I'll also be working on the layout to try and make the various parts of the app fit better on the page. At the moment, the app is only optimized for mouse input and does not respond to touch-based dragging events (to move elements around on the chart).
Now that browsers are dropping support for the Java plug-in, it seems that the days of applets are coming to an end. Although Java applets never dominated the mainstream web experience as much as more popular Flash-based content, they did find a niche in scientific and engineering applications - which is one of the few areas where they will likely be missed.
This article describes the mathematical basis for tradeoffs among noise figure, gain and return loss of an LNA, with implementation in an EDA design tool