The impedance matching section in Bowick is 30 pages long. Half of those pages are full page smith charts.
You won't find a better introduction to lumped element impedance matching anywhere on the planet
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If you want an incredibly crude introduction to basic two element matching then:
Theory:
Every load can be expressed as a single resistance in series with a specific single reactance (at any ONE frequency)
This combination of series resistance + series reactance has a direct equivalent that is a resistance in parallel with a specific single reactance (at the same ONE frequency)
So you have a series signature and a parallel signature that are essentially the same at this target frequency.
Design task: match x to 50 ohms.
If you start with low resistance x and want to match to higher resistance (50 Ohm) then you can do the following:
You shunt the higher resistance (in this case 50 Ohm) with a reactance (both inductive or capacitive reactance will do)
You start off with a very high shunt reactance and adjust it down until the SERIES equivalent of the parallel reactance+50R is equal to x ohms.
When you shunt the 50 Ohm with a reactance you also create (as a side effect) a series equivalent reactance that now needs to be matched out with another reactive component. So you then balance out this SERIES reactance with its opposite reactance to end up with x loaded with x.
This is known as an L match as you use two components to do the match and they are configured as series shunt (an L shape). If you shunt the 50Ohm with a capacitor then you end up with a series inductor to complete the match and vice versa.
Although the circuit looks to us like a L shape, the 'eqivalent' circuit is x looking into a series resonant inductor and capacitor (therefore they cancel to zero) and this is looking into x ohms (you need to keep the theory of the parallel equivalent concept in mind to visualise this)
Bowick will contain all the equations to work this out plus lots of worked examples.
If you want to match 17 Ohm to 50 Ohm at 300MHz then simply shunt the 50 Ohm port with 14.7pF and then add a 12.5nH inductor in series between the 17R port and the 50R port to cancel out the residual series reactance.
This will give a reasonable match over a 100MHz bandwidth. Bowick will explain methods to get higher bandwidths using extra sections.