Rating: 
Summary: Clear, easy to read, useful for reference & learning anew.
Review: "Antenna Theory" is written in the usual clear, simple, easy to read language that Balanis uses in his other texts. The text covers all the essentials for learning basic design and analysis procedures for wire, aperture, patch and other antenna types.Basically, if you've used Balanis's Advanced EMAG and you liked it, you'll like this one too.
Rating: 
Summary: An excellent text on antennas
Review: 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!
Rating:
Summary: Good text for self-study and antenna work
Review: 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 techniques 2. 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Not enough pictures
Review: I found this book very confusing and hard to read. There weren't enough pictures of antennas. Also, I like dirty words, not enough swear words to describe the subject properly. Maybe some nudey pictures would help.
Rating:
Summary: Not enough pictures
Review: I found this book very confusing and hard to read. There weren't enough pictures of antennas. Also, I like dirty words, not enough swear words to describe the subject properly. Maybe some nudey pictures would help.
Rating:
Summary: A real good book for learning antenna theory
Review: I teach antenna course and have found that students get confused when problems are incorrect. At least 2 problems (6.40, 6.46) design Tchevy array with specifications that are impossible to meet. The solutionary is wrong too! The required SSL of 30dB is never attained 'cause when you verify the visible region of T(z)doesn't reach sidelobes (z<1) so don't meet for given d and N. Need to increase spacing or N. This is serious bad training for students. In addition, the author use of beta for phase-shift instead of alpha is missleading and confused with nomenclature for k = 2 pi/lambda. Other aspects are very good, but needs color and photos.
Rating: 
Summary: Too many errors in array design (tchevysheff)
Review: I teach antenna course and have found that students get confused when problems are incorrect. At least 2 problems (6.40, 6.46) design Tchevy array with specifications that are impossible to meet. The solutionary is wrong too! The required SSL of 30dB is never attained 'cause when you verify the visible region of T(z)doesn't reach sidelobes (z<1) so don't meet for given d and N. Need to increase spacing or N. This is serious bad training for students. In addition, the author use of beta for phase-shift instead of alpha is missleading and confused with nomenclature for k = 2 pi/lambda. Other aspects are very good, but needs color and photos.
Rating:
Summary: Well organized and easy to follow
Review: I used this book in a graduate Antennas course. I found it to be well organized and the most thorough of the three books on this subject I have used. Equations and their derivations were easy to follow. Problems were clear and followed the level of introduction in the text. All necessary material was clearly introduced. I would recommend this text to any professor looking for a good solid antennas text.
Rating: 
Summary: Average textbook, better reference
Review: If you are an upper-level/graduate student who doesn't like derivations (you know who you are), this book is not the greatest choice for you. The way the book is written is very dry and not conducive to staying awake. Reading this (and taking notes) at my own pace, I took three months to wade through Chapter 2! I had to mark several pages with sticky notes to remember to re-read things I didn't understand. On the other hand, this book has some nice reference information if you are doing computer simulations of antennas, and would like to double-check the results of your models. The graphs and figures were extra helpful. The index generally supports the use of this book as a reference text, although it has failed to identify some very helpful graphs. Overall, it is a decent book, and I'm glad to have a copy. I've just started reading another antennas book, Antennas For All Applications, 3rd. ed., by John Kraus and Ronald Marhefka, and I find it much easier to read. In one sentence, that book explained radiation resistance in a way that made more sense to me than all the definitions and equations in an entire section of the Balanis text. The layout on each page of the Kraus book was easy on the eyes, with the text in the standard Times New Roman and the Figure captions in an Arial type of font, which made it easier to read. If you are a student who usually ends up wasting time or dozing off when you try to read your textbook, you'll do the same with this one. If you just need to read a section or two as a reliable reference, this book is fine.
Rating:
Summary: The antenna data base!
Review: One of the most usefull books I've ever had
| 
