Written by engineers, this reference focuses on understanding and designing radio receivers and systems, presenting the characteristics of individual receiver components and their interaction in cascade. The chapters move through filters, mixers, oscillators, amplifiers and noise, linearity, gain distribution along the cascade, and frequency conversion schemes. The authors review transmission line effects, image frequencies, oscillator phase noise, frequency accuracy, drift, how thermal noise limits the smallest signal a receiving system can process, and how nonlinear behavior limits the large signal handling capability of an amplifier. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)