5 ms·

I don't consider RF PCB layout basic engineering and I don't think it's lost. Plenty of us EEs have read Pozar and could make a competent RF layout given time

I don't consider RF PCB layout basic engineering and I don't think it's lost. Plenty of us EEs have read Pozar and could make a competent RF layout given time and resources. I'd first guess that bad layouts are a management decision.

felipemnoa 3y ago
This pozar? https://www.amazon.com/Microwave-Engineering-David-M-Pozar/dp/0470631554 https://www.amazon.com/Microwave-Engineering-David-M-Pozar/d...
- mwbajor 3y ago
  Yes. But if you really want to get into it you need to do it. You could make some cheap PCBs and measure them with a cheap network analyzer. RF design has never been more accessible. The books will get you started and you will start to think about things like de-embedding circuit elements which is very important and not covered in books. You will also start to see why people consider RF design challenging; e.g. curves in the books will depict a "trend" in the circuit and in real-life, everything is a capacitor and/or inductor which causes the real life measurements to deviate substantially from the ideal for reasons that are not always obvious. An even more cheaper accessible intro to RF is just plain old analog electronics. Building amplifiers ,etc.
  - lb1lf 3y ago
    I'd upvote this ten times if I could. I had the good fortune of being exposed to both Pozar, an excellent lecturer and a wizard of an RF lab postdoc when studying RF engineering, and the utility of simply spending lots and lots of time in the lab, trying all sorts of implementations of filters, transmission lines, antennas and whatever caught our fancy, prototyping with wild abandon, verifying (or getting stymied by) the results, refining our measurement skills along the way... Priceless. Then all RF design jobs disappeared overnight and I ended up doing PLC coding instead of working with radio - but, hey, University was great fun, and RF design definitely is one of the fields where there's still room for intuition and a bit of artistry in addition to just knowing the hard theory of the subject.
    - edrxty 3y ago
      Where are all the jobs going? There are a lot of RF things going on at an ever increasing pace but I don't see a lot of people hiring in the field. Do all the defense primes just have a silo of gray beards they keep in a dungeon somewhere?
      - mwbajor 3y ago
        Yes. Many analog design groups in college went from 10's of students 10-15 years ago to just a few now, not due to lack of funding but due to a lack of interest. Our interface to nature is through analog signals but due to the heavy reliance on HW intuition and its relative inflexibility (but more 'elegant solutions' if you ask me) analog electronics continues to grow in unpopularity in industry and academia follows. Yes, there are just some older guys updating old designs in many instances. The push for RFSOCs and similar products is partially to reduce reliance on the greybeards. Its a shame because there are very interesting areas of analog electronics such as continuous time signal processing. TLDR: To answer your question, to reduce the reliance on a relative few engineers, the market solved it with a few products that are 'just good enough'. This has become a self perpetuating cycle, race to the bottom. There will still be many analog/RF EEs but relegated to a few niche sub-industries serving mainly the DoD and RFIC industries. Even the telecom industry is planning to pipe back raw, downconverted baseband data to a central location to do SDR DSP rather than rely on a modem at the basestation. All for flexibility in lieu of power/efficiency, NRE etc.
        willis936 3y ago
        You aren't painting a fair picture. RFSoCs cost more but they also have much more dynamic range (both amplitude and temporal). It's just just about configurability, but also performance.
        edrxty 3y ago
        Yeah the rfsocs are popular because they're nuts. From a defense pov being able to be that frequency agile is really a big deal.
  - felipemnoa 3y ago
    Thank You! This is really good advice. Just wish I had the time to really get into it.
  - mhh__ 3y ago
    I'd love some lab space to really get into this. All the old high performance stuff used to be designed basically by hand — that takes money and true craft. I spend most of my time in theoretical work of some kind, but get a real urge to build...
gorkish 3y ago
> bad layouts are a management decision. That's an interesting way to describe AliExpress shovelware, but OK, yeah it's a "management decision"
- willis936 3y ago
  Management chooses to make and sell a bad product. It's not that RF design is somehow arcane wizardry lost to time.

felipemnoa 3y ago

This pozar? https://www.amazon.com/Microwave-Engineering-David-M-Pozar/dp/0470631554 https://www.amazon.com/Microwave-Engineering-David-M-Pozar/d...

mwbajor 3y ago
Yes. But if you really want to get into it you need to do it. You could make some cheap PCBs and measure them with a cheap network analyzer. RF design has never been more accessible. The books will get you started and you will start to think about things like de-embedding circuit elements which is very important and not covered in books. You will also start to see why people consider RF design challenging; e.g. curves in the books will depict a "trend" in the circuit and in real-life, everything is a capacitor and/or inductor which causes the real life measurements to deviate substantially from the ideal for reasons that are not always obvious. An even more cheaper accessible intro to RF is just plain old analog electronics. Building amplifiers ,etc.
- lb1lf 3y ago
  I'd upvote this ten times if I could. I had the good fortune of being exposed to both Pozar, an excellent lecturer and a wizard of an RF lab postdoc when studying RF engineering, and the utility of simply spending lots and lots of time in the lab, trying all sorts of implementations of filters, transmission lines, antennas and whatever caught our fancy, prototyping with wild abandon, verifying (or getting stymied by) the results, refining our measurement skills along the way... Priceless. Then all RF design jobs disappeared overnight and I ended up doing PLC coding instead of working with radio - but, hey, University was great fun, and RF design definitely is one of the fields where there's still room for intuition and a bit of artistry in addition to just knowing the hard theory of the subject.
  - edrxty 3y ago
    Where are all the jobs going? There are a lot of RF things going on at an ever increasing pace but I don't see a lot of people hiring in the field. Do all the defense primes just have a silo of gray beards they keep in a dungeon somewhere?
    - mwbajor 3y ago
      Yes. Many analog design groups in college went from 10's of students 10-15 years ago to just a few now, not due to lack of funding but due to a lack of interest. Our interface to nature is through analog signals but due to the heavy reliance on HW intuition and its relative inflexibility (but more 'elegant solutions' if you ask me) analog electronics continues to grow in unpopularity in industry and academia follows. Yes, there are just some older guys updating old designs in many instances. The push for RFSOCs and similar products is partially to reduce reliance on the greybeards. Its a shame because there are very interesting areas of analog electronics such as continuous time signal processing. TLDR: To answer your question, to reduce the reliance on a relative few engineers, the market solved it with a few products that are 'just good enough'. This has become a self perpetuating cycle, race to the bottom. There will still be many analog/RF EEs but relegated to a few niche sub-industries serving mainly the DoD and RFIC industries. Even the telecom industry is planning to pipe back raw, downconverted baseband data to a central location to do SDR DSP rather than rely on a modem at the basestation. All for flexibility in lieu of power/efficiency, NRE etc.
      - willis936 3y ago
        You aren't painting a fair picture. RFSoCs cost more but they also have much more dynamic range (both amplitude and temporal). It's just just about configurability, but also performance.
        edrxty 3y ago
        Yeah the rfsocs are popular because they're nuts. From a defense pov being able to be that frequency agile is really a big deal.
- felipemnoa 3y ago
  Thank You! This is really good advice. Just wish I had the time to really get into it.
- mhh__ 3y ago
  I'd love some lab space to really get into this. All the old high performance stuff used to be designed basically by hand — that takes money and true craft. I spend most of my time in theoretical work of some kind, but get a real urge to build...

gorkish 3y ago

> bad layouts are a management decision. That's an interesting way to describe AliExpress shovelware, but OK, yeah it's a "management decision"

willis936 3y ago
Management chooses to make and sell a bad product. It's not that RF design is somehow arcane wizardry lost to time.