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Editorial Guidelines

Editorial Profile: RF Design is a professional engineering publication that addresses the design and development of products that enable the transmission, reception, conversion or measurement of radio frequency signals (3 kHz to 300 GHz). RF Design’s mission is to provide engineers with information on both classical and leading-edge techniques and technologies they can use today to design radio frequency products that will enable the performance of communications, control, navigation, detection, identification and diagnostic functions by tomorrow’s electronic end-user equipment and service-providing systems.

Article Guidelines: Feature articles for RF Design focus on presenting both classical and leading-edge RF design methods using a practical, instructional approach. All articles will receive a thorough review by the editorial staff and editorial board members prior to acceptance and publication. Article abstracts should be sent for review before the article is actually written. However, any completed articles can also be submitted for review. Contact Roger Lesser, Editor, RF Design, 5680 Greenwood Plaza Blvd, Suite 100, Englewood, CO 80111. Gregg can be reached at Tel. 720-489-3200; Fax 720-489-3253; e-mail roger_lesser@intertec.com.

Preparing the article: RF Design is used as a reference throughout the industry. As such, good representation of technical material depends on a complete understanding of the material more than it depends on writing style. In general, a step-by-step approach will get the message across, in the same manner as a verbal explanation to a colleague. To help organize an article, the following suggestions are offered:

· Thoroughly check all technical material for accuracy.
· Use the most direct (often the simplest) word that makes the point.
· Begin the article with a short description of the material to be covered. Identify the problem or task, and provide an overview of the benefits of the solution.
· Explain the process — In a step-by-step manner, lead the reader through the design, testing and other features of the work. Relate the steps to the ultimate objective. NOTE: be complete — not all engineers reading an article will be well versed in the subject. Include enough explanation or references to make the material accessible to everyone.
· All charts, graphs, formulas etc. must clearly define parameters.
· Conclusion — Finish with a short summary of the most important features or lessons learned.
· Suggest a title and "deck" for the article. The deck appears below the title and should intrigue the reader to read the article. Answer the question every reader wants to know: "What is in this article for me?" Decks should be 2 to 3 short sentences.

Once an article is accepted, it will be edited for clarity and length as necessary.

Submitting the article: All articles must be submitted on a 3.5" diskette as an ASCII (text) or Microsoft Word file.

Length — Feature articles are typically six to nine double-spaced pages, with four or five charts, graphs or photos. The length may vary considerably as dictated by the material to be covered.

Art — Tables, charts and graphs should be done as clearly and neatly as possible. We would greatly appreciate all art sent in on disk. Computerized artwork should not be embedded in the text file but should instead be submitted as individual files. We accept ZIP, Syquest and diskettes. Art files may be in one of the following formats: Photoshop (JPEG), Adobe Illustrator (AI), Corel Draw (CDR), Windows Metafile (WMF), Bitmap (BMP), Excel (EXL), Powerpoint (PPT), MAC picture file (PICT), GIF, EPS and TIFF art files (EPS and TIFF are preferred.) Color is preferred over black-and-white. If color art files are sent on disk, color must be in CMYK, not RGB.

About the author — Information including the author’s title, company address, telephone number and e-mail address should be included, along with college degrees, experience in the subject and other important statements.

Computer programs: RF Design encourages the submission of computer programs, especially those that execute the computations described in a good design article. We will publish programs that are not accompanied by complete engineering write-ups. These will typically include solutions to well-known design problems and should include a complete set of references. We will also provide the programs on our Web site for downloading.

The overwhelming majority of users require MS-DOS compatible programs, either in BASIC or in executable code. Other systems (e.g., Macintosh, HP, mainframes) and languages will be considered on a case-by-case basis. Submit the program on disk with the draft article for evaluation.

Fees: RF Design authors receive an honorarium of $50 per printed magazine page, or a nominal fee of $1 if the article was written on behalf of the author’s employer and features that company’s product or service.