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I once went to an antenna tuning/design/factory for my startup's product and I told the guy there, I want an antenna to support X frequencies, this that dBs, go

I once went to an antenna tuning/design/factory for my startup's product and I told the guy there, I want an antenna to support X frequencies, this that dBs, good VSWR, hopefully achieve X kilometers range, etc etc. Two days later he had 3 designs of antennas ready to be made into a flexible PCB and two days after that we got the FPCB samples. I was amazed so I asked to see how he works. He took copper tape, and with a boxcutter he carves the antenna, and adds solder blobs to tune with the network analyzer. Then, once he was satisfied, he shoved them into the anechoic chamber and boom, done. Black magic stuff. Antenna intuition is really hard to attain, it takes years playing with the right equipment in the right environment..

js2 8y ago
> Antenna intuition is really hard to attain For some reason this reminded me of musician Carolina Eyck playing a theramin on this Tiny Desk Concert: https://www.npr.org/2019/01/10/683943414/carolina-eyck-and-clarice-jensen-tiny-desk-concert https://www.npr.org/2019/01/10/683943414/carolina-eyck-and-c... It’s worth watching to see her demo how she plays the different notes and also changes the volume. And here’s more of a theramin tutorial by her: https://youtu.be/MJACNHHuGp0 https://youtu.be/MJACNHHuGp0
btashton 8y ago
I remember this from a professor in college as well. I spent weeks modeling an antenna element and then once I had it made, he brought out the copper tape and a knife and tuned it to closer match what we wanted. It is humbling to see this kind of craftsmanship in technology.
etaioinshrdlu 8y ago
I think with good simulation tools, optimization processes, maybe even deep learning, we could make it a lot less of black magic. Make it boring and approachable instead. It kind of reminds me of chemistry. You have physical laws that are fairly simple but the interactions are hard to describe without a bunch of computation.
- nisuni 8y ago
  What’s the point of applying deep learning to something for which we have an exact mathematical theory?
  - raverbashing 8y ago
    Answer: because the exact mathematical theory can't give you models, just the performance of a given model. Calculating EM equations exactly is also a GIGANTIC PAIN IN THE BNC connector.
  - mnky9800n 8y ago
    It's much sexier if you add some deep learning
  - sannee 8y ago
    The analysis part of engineering is, thanks to modern computers, practically "done". However, we are still not able to do synthesis well. We also have exact mathematical models for that, but it usually amounts to NP-hard problems (think integer optimization).
  - badpun 8y ago
    I don't know about this specific case, but often the exact models are so complex that you can't optimize them analytically, so you resort to a global optimization best effort, where the results are not guaranteed to be any good - so you might as well try something DL-based too, to see how it would perform.
    - Gibbon1 8y ago
      Classic traveling salesman problem cast into a large number of analytically incompatible and often hard to quantify dimensions.
- miemo 8y ago
  >maybe even deep learning, we could make it a lot less of black magic these two things are antithetical

js2 8y ago

> Antenna intuition is really hard to attain For some reason this reminded me of musician Carolina Eyck playing a theramin on this Tiny Desk Concert: https://www.npr.org/2019/01/10/683943414/carolina-eyck-and-clarice-jensen-tiny-desk-concert https://www.npr.org/2019/01/10/683943414/carolina-eyck-and-c... It’s worth watching to see her demo how she plays the different notes and also changes the volume. And here’s more of a theramin tutorial by her: https://youtu.be/MJACNHHuGp0 https://youtu.be/MJACNHHuGp0

btashton 8y ago

I remember this from a professor in college as well. I spent weeks modeling an antenna element and then once I had it made, he brought out the copper tape and a knife and tuned it to closer match what we wanted. It is humbling to see this kind of craftsmanship in technology.

etaioinshrdlu 8y ago

I think with good simulation tools, optimization processes, maybe even deep learning, we could make it a lot less of black magic. Make it boring and approachable instead. It kind of reminds me of chemistry. You have physical laws that are fairly simple but the interactions are hard to describe without a bunch of computation.

nisuni 8y ago
What’s the point of applying deep learning to something for which we have an exact mathematical theory?
- raverbashing 8y ago
  Answer: because the exact mathematical theory can't give you models, just the performance of a given model. Calculating EM equations exactly is also a GIGANTIC PAIN IN THE BNC connector.
- mnky9800n 8y ago
  It's much sexier if you add some deep learning
- sannee 8y ago
  The analysis part of engineering is, thanks to modern computers, practically "done". However, we are still not able to do synthesis well. We also have exact mathematical models for that, but it usually amounts to NP-hard problems (think integer optimization).
- badpun 8y ago
  I don't know about this specific case, but often the exact models are so complex that you can't optimize them analytically, so you resort to a global optimization best effort, where the results are not guaranteed to be any good - so you might as well try something DL-based too, to see how it would perform.
  - Gibbon1 8y ago
    Classic traveling salesman problem cast into a large number of analytically incompatible and often hard to quantify dimensions.
miemo 8y ago
>maybe even deep learning, we could make it a lot less of black magic these two things are antithetical