About Wireless Field Guide
What Wireless Field Guide is, who it is for, how its pages are made and fact-checked, and how it stays independent.
Wireless Field Guide is an independent reference for people who build and run radio systems. It covers the whole chain: signals and spectra, antennas and propagation, link budgets and noise, modulation and coding, OFDM, MIMO, synchronisation, RF front ends and software-defined radio, then the systems built on them: LTE, 5G NR, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth LE and UWB, LPWAN, satellite links, and the research heading towards 6G. The aim is a page you can open in the middle of a job and trust: the maths that matters, code that runs, and versions, standards and specifications with a date on them.
Who it is for
- RF, baseband and protocol engineers who want a reference that is not tied to one vendor’s documentation or one tool’s tutorials.
- Software, embedded and FPGA engineers moving into wireless, who need the radio-specific parts without a second degree.
- Students and self-taught builders who want a path from a first decibel calculation to a working receiver on synthetic IQ, and then on a real radio.
We assume you can write a short Python program and remember some complex numbers and probability. We do not assume you have used GNU Radio or read a 3GPP specification before.
How it is organised
| Section | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Learn | Ordered lessons in four tracks (beginner, intermediate, advanced, expert), each with diagrams, runnable code and an exercise |
| Topics | One hub per subject, from wireless foundations to careers, that gathers the lessons, reference pages, projects, news and papers on it |
| Platforms | One page per maker or project, such as NI and Ettus Research, Analog Devices, GNU Radio, srsRAN, OpenAirInterface, Qualcomm, Ericsson, Nokia, Keysight, Rohde & Schwarz and Nordic Semiconductor, with tooling, licensing and the sharp edges |
| Reference | Cheat sheets, a software matrix, a glossary and a hardware database of SDRs and transceiver chips, each with a “last verified” date |
| Projects | Builds that run end to end on synthetic or recorded IQ on a laptop, with notes on moving them to a real radio |
| News | Short briefs on standards, releases and industry events, each linked to its sources and to a page that teaches the background |
| Research | A weekly digest of wireless papers in plain language, saying whether each result came from simulation, a lab testbed or a field measurement |
| Events | Conferences, courses and community meetings with dates and costs |
How it is made
Content is drafted with AI assistance, from sources that are read and summarised in new words, and every piece passes automated originality, fact-grounding and code-execution checks before a person reviews it.
Code is run in the environment readers would use: Python blocks with a pinned set of libraries (NumPy, SciPy, GNU Radio and others) on a laptop CPU, offline, with signals generated in the block. GNU Radio flowgraphs run headless and must finish on their own. A block that does not run does not ship. A block that needs a real radio is marked as such, is only syntax-checked, and the text says that a radio must be connected.
How facts are checked
A page that matches its own source is not enough. Facts are checked against independent evidence that was fetched while the page was written.
- Every citation is checked against its CrossRef or arXiv record. The title, first author and year must match.
- Every number, specification, version, date, name and attribution must be supported by a fetched document: the cited paper or book, the standard (a 3GPP TS or TR, an ITU-R Recommendation, an IEEE 802 standard), the maker’s documentation or datasheet, or our reference library.
- The reference library holds legal copies only: 3GPP specifications and ITU-R Recommendations (free from their publishers), arXiv and other open-access papers, and documents makers and projects publish openly.
- A fact-check stage lists each page’s checkable claims and gives each a verdict (supported, derived, common, unsupported or contradicted), with a verbatim quotation from the evidence. The script confirms every quotation really appears in the evidence it names. A contradicted claim, or an unsupported number, version, date, name or citation, fails the page.
- News briefs use at least two independent sources where they exist: the report, the primary source it links to, and other publishers’ reports of the same story. A fact found in only one source is attributed in the sentence. A brief that rests on a single secondary source is held for a person.
- Published pages are re-checked over time, oldest check first.
Evergreen pages (topic hubs, platform pages, reference pages and projects) are reviewed before publication. The “last verified” date records when their versions, prices, specifications and links were last checked against the source.
We write about radios in a particular way. A lab demo is not a field trial, a field trial is not a commercial network, and a “6G” result is research until a standard says otherwise. Throughput, range and battery-life figures from a launch are reported as the maker’s figures, with the source named. LTE and 5G NR features carry the 3GPP release that introduced them. Where we do not know something, we say so.
Independence
Wireless Field Guide takes no sponsorship from chip makers, equipment vendors, operators or anyone else, and carries no affiliate links. Product and company names are trademarks of their owners and appear here only to identify the products.
When we criticise a tool, a radio or a claim, it is because we found a specific problem, and we try to say exactly what and where it is.
Sister sites
Wireless Field Guide is built on the same templates and rules as three sister sites. Where subjects meet, the sites link to each other rather than repeat each other.
- FPGA Guide, for programmable logic, including DSP on FPGAs for radio front ends.
- AI/ML Field Guide, for machine learning background: neural networks, training, evaluation and deployment.
- Robotics Field Guide, for robots, drones and the radios they carry.
Errors and contact
If something on a page is wrong, the corrections page explains how to tell us and what happens next. For anything else, see contact.