Studying Textbook suggestions for LiDAR/Radar/RF Telemetry

[pretysmitty]

Previously I made this post, and soon after realized how woefully unprepared I am to approach such a topic. As stated in the post, I think my best use of time would be to gain background knowledge on the topic before attempting a project, but now I think I've found a better focus as to what exactly I want to study.

After skimming through some papers that seem relevant (see list at bottom), I think I need to focus on radar and related EM subjects (though, would antenna design be relevant as well?). I'm not sure what I need to study besides a general understanding of optics and radar, so I was hoping you all could provide some suggestions for references/textbooks. Here are the topics that I think I should cover:

- General undergrad EM physics text (perhaps not necessary? I can easily find one online)
- Optics relevant to bioimaging (fluorescence, MRI, ultrasound etc)
- Antenna Design
- Radar Design
- Physics for biomedical imaging
- Any relevant topics to get a background for this thesis

List of links:
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep03535
https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.2995
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep10588
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4940032/
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nn5020775
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0967-3334/26/1/008/meta
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7335665
https://news.uci.edu/2015/05/18/measuring-brainstorms/
https://www.disabled-world.com/medical/nanotechnology/nanotube.phpMy background: Rising senior EE major. I took Biochem I+II instead of E-Mag, planning on taking them later.

 

[Cram]

Hi pretysmitty,
Given that you haven't had a response yet on this thread, I thought I'd share some thoughts.

One thing I found was that general Engineering EM does not grant enough of a background to jump straight into highly developed fields such as Photonics or microwave design. Though the general understanding is common, the nomenclature, technology, materials, analysis techniques and tools used in those areas are different.

Each of the topics you mentioned are pretty deep.
Based on the information you gave, I would probably recommend doing it this way:

-General EM: Go through "Electricity & Magnetism" by Purcell. EM is math intensive so you will know pretty quickly if you are out of depth with it and need to retreat to drilling some vector calculus, volume integral, PDEs and matrix algebra.
The goal here is to be familiar with the concepts, equations, solutions and solve some common cases. You do not need to be amazing at solving Maxwell's equations by hand, but you do need to know them well.
Ultimately computers will be solving them for you numerically.

-Read and understand "Optoelectronics and Photonics - Principles and Practices" by Kasap. This will cover some of the optical techniques and tech. It is a bit old but serves as a background and gets you used to the terminology.

-Read and understand "Microwave Engineering" by Pozar. Same reason as the photonics text, but for microwave. You may need RF/microwave circuits to switch or modulate the optical systems.

-You will need some understanding of computational EM, since you will be modelling your designs. Have a look for "CEM Lectures" on youtube.

-Part of being an Engineer is delivering practical outcomes - look into doing your own amateur radio projects or something similar to build up your XP.
While not necessarily 'high tech', you will be able to use some of the concepts in a practical way which is an extremely important stepping stone.
The issue is much of the equipment used to measure microwave + optical signals accurately is cost prohibitive for a typical student, and universities tend to be shy about letting undergrads touch it.

If you manage to do the above to a decent standard, by my reckoning you would be ready to at least start some of the things you are talking about, which seem to me like Masters or Doctorate level projects.

Good luck,
Cram

 

[pretysmitty]

Thank you for the references! Really appreciate it

brb, going to go study