does anyone know of a good RF electronics book?

[trickae]

I need to design a radio wave transmitter that transmit a specific code and a receiver that will only receive this code.

what would be the best book to look into as a crash course for designing this?

[berkeman]

"The ARRL Handbook for the Radio Amateur". It's the basic book that HAM radio operators use for RF theory.

Keep in mind that the FCC regulates the RF spectrum, and has some pretty strict rules about how you transmit and what you transmit. Are you familiar with Part 97 of the CFR?

[dingpud]

I agree with the ARRL suggestion. You can probably get a ham liscense and then transmit within the psecific range that your liscense works on. Otherwise, find a HAM, and work with them on it.

Kraus has some good work in his antenna book "Antennas", but i don't know if it is as specific as the ARRL stuff

[trickae]

i'm afraid i wasn't aware of all these regulations for transmission. I was planning on designing an electronic car finder and was researching how we could transmit a signal specific to each car and have it send data such as - distance from the car finder circuit thats attached to a key chain. I was thinking of transmitting the cars license plate number, that way no two people could be transmitting the same signal.

is there an easier method that provides long range data and thats not as hard as GPS?

[mgb_phys]

Most countries allow low power 2.4Ghz transmitions which you might get to work to 100m, especialy if you are sending a simple signal and can repeat it / do some noise filtering.
Some lower frequencies are also free to use but probably mean a transmitter too large for a key fob unit.