  The paper gives an introduction to the gravitational radiation theory of
isolated sources and to the propagation properties of light rays in radiative
gravitational fields. It presents a theoretical study of the generation,
propagation, back-reaction, and detection of gravitational waves from
astrophysical sources. After reviewing the various quadrupole-moment laws for
gravitational radiation in the Newtonian approximation, we show how to
incorporate post-Newtonian corrections into the source multipole moments, the
radiative multipole moments at infinity, and the back-reaction potentials. We
further treat the light propagation in the linearized gravitational field
outside a gravitational wave emitting source. The effects of time delay,
bending of light, and moving source frequency shift are presented in terms of
the gravitational lens potential. Time delay results are applied in the
description of the procedure of the detection of gravitational waves.
