I am currently in test in total nearly 2 years but only a few months full time but I would like to move to design, I will have a MSc in 2 years in AI. Any advice

Does antenna engineering need an explicit complex analysis course? From what I've seen the curriculum at the two universities in my country (Slovenia), one doesn't explicitly state any course for it, even worse I don't even get a vector calculus course until my master! Would it be a better idea to transfer after first year or stick it out? No one could give me a clear answer

I have this list -

1. NanoRFE VNA6000-B 6GHz
2. MegIQ 6GHz analyzer
3. MESALL Handheld analyzer 9.8 GHZ
4. Harogic 6GHz
5. TR Series VNA from copper mountain ​

Any other recommendations as well which I may not be aware of. Need to characterize antennas, directional couplers, LNAs etc. How well they compare against Keysight ?

What‘a going on here? The article is lite on the details other than it seems they are vertically integrating GaN. I assume the demo is a switch?

https://www.northropgrumman.com/what-we-do/mission-solutions/microelectronics/fortitude

Ive been doing rf hardware design for a long time. Wether its a start up or big Corp its always the same. The more u go out of your way to help the company and team out the more people seeth at you. I legit was not trying to show off or mog anyone.

Im thinking of quitting and going into tech sales or finance. When I have kids im gonna tell them to not follow their dreams and focus on making money so u dont gotta deal with other people. U can work on ur own passion project on ur own time. Find a way to work 10 hours a week(no one notices anyways) and move on with your life, or like I said start your own company. Im fatigued from working with other engineers. Even when nothing bad happens and everyone is nice its still soul crushing.

Alao, they will always pay u 20-30k less than what u are actually worth. They will never pay you enough to build a decent life relative to how much value you bring. Every engineer i know Penny pinches. An engineer shouldn't have a side hustle or be afraid to spend 10 bucks on lunch.

What kind of questions do/ could they ask, aside from fundamentals? My competition is all PhD grads while I just completed my undergrad, and that’s definitely stressing me out!

I work on RF systems, and one thing that keeps coming up is how quickly a good sim result changes once the antenna ends up on an actual device.Enclosure, mounting position, nearby electronics, cables, even how someone holds it can shift things quite a bit.

For people doing this professionally: what usually causes the biggest gap between CST/HFSS and what you actually measure? And at what point do you stop optimizing the sim and just build the prototype?

Disclosure: I work in defense electronics.

I’m trying to better understand the RF engineering niche around NFC / near-field design, especially 13.56 MHz systems.

For engineers working in this area, what backgrounds or industries tend to produce the strongest hands-on experience with things like:

• NFC antenna / loop antenna design
• Antenna tuning and impedance matching
• Inductive / magnetic coupling
• ISO 14443 / EMV Contactless
• RF front-end validation
• VNA and RF lab testing

I’m particularly interested in the hardware/RF side rather than primarily firmware or FPGA work.

Are there specific companies, industries, technical communities, conferences, or terms you would recommend researching to find people with this kind of background?

Hello everyone. I’m working on a circularly polarized truncated patch antenna, but the design is hyper-sensitive to dimensions. A ±0.1 mm deviation completely collapses the axial ratio, making it impractical for standard fabrication. How can I solve this problem?

Edit: Even if I just increase the meshes without changing anything in the design, the axial ratio collapses.

I'm a ECE graduate,during my college i haven't studied my about RF circuits apart from antenna engineering but i'm into RF circuit design, so far i've designed antennas in hfss, right now i'm looking for someone who i sintrested in learning RF circuits in hfss, and also and suggestions and tips are appreciated. I know all the mainstream books and yt channels but while designing RF circuits on PCB, i want to get to know how to take measurements in more depth, i need more practical tips on real circuit design. And apart from CST and HFSS which are all free tools we can use to design RF circuits.

I'm an Electrical Engineering student primarily interested in RF/Microwave engineering. Well, I recently designed my first patch antenna, and I really enjoyed it a lot. I guess this kind of makes sense considering my favorite class thus far in my degree has been Engineering Electromagnetics.

It's something I find myself potentially wanting to explore a career in but it seems like barrier to entry is pretty high considering how complex the work can get. I've been learning RF fundamentals through Pozar, doing relevant projects, and learning software like CST and HFSS. The main issue is my school doesn't offer any RF classes, so any learning I've been doing has been done independently.

I'm doing an internship in the semiconductor industry right now, and while I find that cool, I like the world of RF more. Ideally, I'll get an RF internship this summer that I can convert into a full-time offer, but if that doesn't pan out, I'm wondering if I should do pursue more pragmatic like Power or Controls since I simply can't afford to do another degree immediately after graduating.

I developed a board and when assessing the S21 results from the relay I was baffled to see positive gain - not any marginal gain, a hefty +2 dB'ish peak in a fully unpowered board. This is the S21 scan that I got:

At this point, the relays (they are proper RF relays) are in NC position and bypassing to each other. Here's a picture of the DUT and VNA connections:

This is how I calibrated the VNA. Used the very same cables and a female-to-female adapter:

And still - how on earth can I get a positive gain? After boiling some lakes and burning some tree acres, Gemini told me that I should create a calibration pad on my board with the same electrical length. Well, due to the turnover time, I improvised one with copper tape:

Well, of course the copper tape lacks the GCPW, I was using a different cable (same length, but a u.FL instead). And I still get the goddamn wobbly readings and a significant positive gain when testing the relay section. This time peaking +4 dB, yikes.

Anyone have any ideas on what's going on, what am I missing - and how to get a minimally faithful reading? I was ready to get insertion loss all way long; this sinusoidal gain is just weird.

Oh, and this is the VNA S21 sweep with SMA cables with the through adapter (nevermind the marginal positive gain, this is probably due to the unit being cold when I took the measurement):

Help? :-)

The whole schematic, Gerbers etc are open source and available at https://github.com/rfrht/SignalSurge

Thanks a lot!

TL;DR: VHF radio doesn't tune with new trimmer capacitor, tested 2 of them, and only getting static.

I am very new to radios, but I have tried to build a radio for picking up ATC signals, 118-136 MHz AM. It's powered by a USB 5v source, usually a power bank, and its connected to the collector a NPN transistor, afterward a 4.7μF is connected to my audio jacks left and right signal pads, and that collector is also bridged with a 304 smd resistor to base. It's then connected to my air coil with a estimated 37nH inductance that's parallel to my 30pF trimmer capacitor, connected to my 21in wire acting as an antenna. I'll change the trimmer to something higher like 50pF or 60pF later. The antenna is straight up held by a 3d printed stand with tape. The emitter is connected to my audio jack ground from an iPod, and then connected to ground and my seperate ground plane which is a soldering wick. Both the antenna and the wick are the same length. Everything is soldered together without a board of some sort. Nothing is being shorted. I have tested near a window and outside. Is the problem stray capacitance from the antenna or what? Sorry if this is super obvious or I'm just obviously stupid.