Antenna Theory: Analysis and Design

This is quite possibly one of the biggest books on antennas ever written. The information is presented in a clear and concise manner, and you can easily find what you need. There is all sorts of information on new antennas and the derivations for many equations are presented clearly. There is enough material to give all other books page envy, and therefore, it earns a rating of 5 stars.

I have two standard textbooks on antennas, namely, Antenna Theory by Balanis and Antennas by Kraus (both third edition). Both are good books. But if I could keep only one book, I would definitely choose Balanis because, in my non-expert opinion, it is more coherent, more systematic, and has a stronger emphasis on principles. Balanis also comes with a helpful CD containing Powerpoint slides (tons of them), Matlab files, and a few other items. The paper quality is superb but the paper thickness makes for a tome that feels like a heavy college dictionary. The mathematics is not as scary as I originally thought, and should be okay for final year EE undergraduates. I recommend this book highly and unreservedly.

I bought this book when I needed to analyze antennas in arrays in and found it very competent and logical. There are many things to like about it:1. comprehensive coverage of antenna types and analysis techniques2. Chapter 2 contains a nice compendium of definitions according to IEEE standards, with enough mathematical detail to make it useful in its own right.3. Good explanations of the material. It's not a cookbook (that's good!). Balanis provides clear text and derivations of the key results, with illustrations. He hasn't watered down the level of sophistication of his topics; they aren't at the research level, but they are fully at the level of the established state of the art.4) Error-free. I typically wrestle with a few errors or typos in a text as I repeat derivations or perform calcs in the course of my work. I haven't found any errors here so far.Coverage of the various antenna types is pretty standard. It's in discussions of topics like the Method of Moments, reciprocity, and self- and mutual- impedance, and the method of stationary phase where the book shines--they are clear, easy to follow, with sufficient detail to solve real problems.Shortcomings of the book are few, but include:a) sparse or no treatment of advanced topics such as scattering, array implementation, network approach (foster's reaction theorem, relation of mutual coupling to measured scattering parameters), etc.b) inclusion of Fortran (!) programs for the calculations. Matlab, Mathcad or just plain descriptions would be more useful. Puzzling since one Matlab file is included.I recommend this book heartily. Engineering practicality and mathematical rigor are balanced nicely. The lack of advanced topic coverage is easily made up by going to specialty texts or the research literature. It worked well for me as a self-study text, and should work for you too.

Any one who have had an introductory course on electromagnetics may use this book either as a reference for an antenna design or as a perfect learning material. Balanis' clear, informative language, enhanced with many illustrations help the student to understand the subject easily. Due to its wide range of topics, the book is of invaluable help for an antenna designer. The diskette provided with the book includes FORTRAN codes for many practical design problems and frees the reader from complicated formulas. A must have for any enginneer involved in the subject!

This text has been a standard in graduate antenna theory classes for years. The first edition was also well written, but the author has reorganized some of the chapters and better explains some of the more advanced topics. This is the only text I'll ever use for my intro to antenna theory classes.