Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The quiet resurgence of RF engineering

atempleton.bearblog.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 160 posts

Re: The quiet resurgence of RF engineering

#141

Post by Joel_Mckay »

lormayna wrote: post #121
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #36

Indeed, the dark arts of RF engineered components persist long after other technologies change. Mostly, expensive tools became more accessible like TinySA, LiteVNA64 and NanoVNA. For the amateur Ham hobby, it has been a bit of a golden age with https://www.rtl-sdr.com/buy-rtl-sdr-dvb-t-dongles/

Also for a student: I was at university 20 years ago and there was no possibility to "hack" RF devices. Right now, with less than 200€ (a NanoVNA and a good SDR), you can do almost everything.

In general, some SDR offer phase-locked quadrature encoder/decoder RF front-ends.

https://www.mouser.com/c/?marcom=120135054

Combined with a good directional coupler and GPSDO, people do build very high-end pieces of equipment. Not user friendly for most students, but removes a lot of traditional DSP complexity.

Current design limits on bit-resolution and bandwidth are usually just people avoiding getting hit with export restrictions.

The Pluto SDR rich software ecosystem is likely a better option for students:

https://www.analog.com/en/resources/evaluation-hardware-and-...

Have a wonderful day =3

Re: The quiet resurgence of RF engineering

#142

Post by saltcured »

willis936 wrote: post #49
saltcured wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the issue that this kind of RF is a lot like designing CPUs? There aren't many economically viable products that don't just use a COTS highly integrated circuit, so there aren't that many full on design jobs to go along with all the usage. The product work is higher level system packaging, such as antennas and application-level manipulation of the whole RF block. But since so much is digital now, that is more s…

I'm not an RF insider, but RFSoCs and deep budgets are a thing. I don't really see this as a constraint. If you are budget constrained then you just design your signal chain in discretes like everyone else.

My point was that the examples above like WiFi and 5G are solved with highly integrated COTS modules, not small players designing their own radios.

The fact that there is a large market for end-user products does not translate into lots of design teams in a global sense. Much like there are lots of computer use cases but not that many CPU design teams you can really hire into.

Re: The quiet resurgence of RF engineering

#143

Post by idiotsecant »

embeng4096 wrote: post #133
idiotsecant wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electrical engineers don't really pull wires .... Electricians might be temporarily safe from AI but EEs are knowledge workers too.

Idk, I'd like to see AI design a schematic and lay out a board. Even the occasional "Show HN" that combines AI+PCB stuff is about analysis and checks. It doesn't seem like anybody is even near any kind of ECAD using AI. People still complain about autorouters. Even frontier models need architecting and guard rails in software to avoid spaghetti, it seems like an even harder problem to get them to choose the correct p…

Its just a data problem, there's nothing special about the task. It just happens that there's a lot of data about programming already.

Re: The quiet resurgence of RF engineering

#144

Post by harimau777 »

drtz wrote: post #39
WarmWash wrote: post #10

I'm one of the young(er) few who stuck with hardware out of passion rather than follow the comfortable allure of software that all my peers did. You make less money, often half. You need to commute to work. Work prospects are narrower and heavily military biased. You get exposed to harmful materials/chemicals. Hardware development is slow, tedious, and punishing compared to software. Having a home lab requires far fa…

I left a career in RF and analog design about 15 years ago to go all-in on software. I liked technical aspects of hardware design, but the workplace culture was very lacking to say the least. Hopefully things have improved since then, but my perception at the time was that engineers in the field were paid and treated quite poorly compared to software engineers, despite having a significantly higher barrier to entry i…

My experience is firmware to software instead of hardware to software. However, I had the opposite experience.

The big difference to me was that when I was working as a firmware engineer, I was treated like an engineer. For example, if I brought a design concern to my boss it would be seriously considered. In software engineering, on the other hand, I'm basically treated like a bluecollar worker.

Re: The quiet resurgence of RF engineering

#145

Post by harimau777 »

GrumpyYoungMan wrote: post #28
WarmWash wrote: post #10

I'm one of the young(er) few who stuck with hardware out of passion rather than follow the comfortable allure of software that all my peers did. You make less money, often half. You need to commute to work. Work prospects are narrower and heavily military biased. You get exposed to harmful materials/chemicals. Hardware development is slow, tedious, and punishing compared to software. Having a home lab requires far fa…

> " ...stuck with hardware out of passion... " At least you don't hate your job, I hope? The recent maturation of AI revealed how many people in software seemingly loathe their own profession.

I think it could just be that they like different things about the profession? Personally, I got into it because of a love of algorithms and computer science. To me, actually writing code is just the drudgery I have to do to implement my work.

Re: The quiet resurgence of RF engineering

#146

Post by girvo »

embeng4096 wrote: post #133
idiotsecant wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electrical engineers don't really pull wires .... Electricians might be temporarily safe from AI but EEs are knowledge workers too.

Idk, I'd like to see AI design a schematic and lay out a board. Even the occasional "Show HN" that combines AI+PCB stuff is about analysis and checks. It doesn't seem like anybody is even near any kind of ECAD using AI. People still complain about autorouters. Even frontier models need architecting and guard rails in software to avoid spaghetti, it seems like an even harder problem to get them to choose the correct p…

> Idk, I'd like to see AI design a schematic and lay out a board.

It's being worked on, and as the other commenter said, it's a data problem not a fundamental limitation. That's what's scary to me.

That said the SOTA tools in this space still suck, so it's not here yet :)

Re: The quiet resurgence of RF engineering

#147

Post by harimau777 »

girvo wrote: post #35
GrumpyYoungMan wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " ...stuck with hardware out of passion... " At least you don't hate your job, I hope? The recent maturation of AI revealed how many people in software seemingly loathe their own profession.

> The recent maturation of AI revealed how many people in software seemingly loathe their own profession. I always had an inkling this was the case, but man it's been depressing to see it laid so bare. So many proudly screaming "I hated programming!". Well, I don't, I love it, and have my entire life, and imagine I'll continue to as long as they will let me... More relevantly to the article and comment we're replying…

I'm the other way around, I've been shocked to learn how many computer scientists consider programming to be the core of their work. I had always understood programming as simply an end to a means in order to implement a design/algorithm. But man! Design and algorithms! That's where the real soul is!

Re: The quiet resurgence of RF engineering

#148

Post by sitzkrieg »

gbgarbeb wrote: post #91
sitzkrieg wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not to mention the price of a remotely usable vector network analyzer will make any software look affordable

A $50 TinyVNA is too expensive? Please.

im talking about good, professional multigigahertz vnas. tinyvna are toys in comparison

Re: The quiet resurgence of RF engineering

#149

Post by sitzkrieg »

oscillonoscope wrote: post #138
sitzkrieg wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i have done firmware development, pcb design and light ee work and basic rf and antenna design professionally with zero degrees. like anything else it’s a matter of getting your foot in the door first, then outperforming the academic nerds with zero experience

Why are people who don't have degrees always so weird about it?

yea, so so weird about sharing how they’re optional.

Re: The quiet resurgence of RF engineering

#150

Post by sitzkrieg »

mike50 wrote: post #75
sitzkrieg wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i have done firmware development, pcb design and light ee work and basic rf and antenna design professionally with zero degrees. like anything else it’s a matter of getting your foot in the door first, then outperforming the academic nerds with zero experience

With the exception of firmware development those are all designer tasks that have never required a degree.

i have never seen any listings for any of these jobs not stipulate a degree being required.
Post reply on HN