RF DESIGN AND ANTENNA MEASUREMENT
The
mystery in RF design is slowly being exposed via some very good web
resources. At one time the RF engineer was known as the discrete analog
expert where "digital people" dared not tread. Before the days of
PC-based circuit simulators he was the one programming calculators with
algorithms for what he had just observed on the bench. He had a
collection of prized papers and books which gave him clues to design.
In addition--keeping his knowledge discrete-based and specialized-- the
IC world was slow to catch-up to "integrating RF into die-form
circuits". Nobody expected "wireless" to be the future--people were
still seeing computers as the future. Ahhh...but the
portable-communications need drove entirely new levels of RF design.
And once that happened a lot of things became a lot easier in RF design
as discrete circuits were replaced with RF building blocks. There is
both good and bad in this trend: (1) It opens the door for a lot of new
block-diagram based designs which is great and it causes new speed in
design but (2) As things move ahead to simple blocks whole areas of
critical thought needed for innovative design of the blocks becomes
forgotten. Hence there are new engineers to the field critically
lacking in some of the fundamentals as its all too easy to rely on a
software circuit predictor instead of "the real world."
The
good RF engineers thus need to be a hybrid of both the old and the
new. He must be adept at the "building block" approach to RF Design
where "he who assembles the most blocks fatest wins" but also he needs
to be specialized in troubleshooting skills necessary to even know
where the problem is with the blocks. Also for the still-needed areas
of discrete design such as in filters, couplers, or low-cost RF, etc.
he needs a very good background in a lot of areas one never receives in
school. Fortuneately the proliferation of web-based papers can help in
this area but what can't be "short-cutted" is simply the
"time-in-the-career" it takes to master these skills.
So where
are the good RF engineers? Well certainly a lot of companies drive them
to management which slowly dilutes the future technical learning curve.
Others remain in companies focusing on areas of expertise--so maybe
they become the expert on pin-diode-tuned filters. Others simple see their future in consulting.
If you have any great links please forward an e-mail to the folks at wave technology or to some of the other sites mentioned below..
Here are some links to papers on RF and antenna design:
When you have a need for RF Design....or antenna design....or FCC consulting....or RF PCB layout...check out www.wavetechnology.org.
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http://web-ee.com/tutorials/
http://www.filter-solutions.com/
http://www.filter-solutions.com/
http://www.microchip.com/stellent/idcplg?IdcService=SS_GET_PAGE&nodeId=1406&dDocName=en010007
http://www.mstarlabs.com/software/fgen1.html
http://web-ee.com/downloads/signal_processing/
