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The quiet resurgence of RF engineering

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Re: The quiet resurgence of RF engineering

#31

Post by greggsy »

amoshebb wrote: post #11
cactacea wrote: post #3

> I've worked in the aerospace industry for the past 8 years, and for most of that time I felt like I could confidently say that RF engineering felt like it was a quiet, non evolving field. Not an EE myself but honestly baffled how the author got that impression with the huge expansion of RF engineering in the consumer space - particularly with 3/4/5G/LTE networks and 802.1x. Maybe this is just an artifact of working…

Also ignoring the massive new market that has been automotive radars which, as a market, have totally eclipsed weapons

It’s a big market but theres only a handful of use cases and R&D requirements, compared to military where the use cases and niche requirements are still continually evolving.

Mil systems have severely constrained supply chain limitations too, while consumer vehicle systems can comfortably be produced in their millions from China.

Re: The quiet resurgence of RF engineering

#32

Post by GrumpyYoungMan »

uejfiweun wrote: post #13
TimorousBestie wrote: post #2

I agree broadly with the author but I think they miss the fact that American EE supply is not going to grow at e.g., 7% year over year. The infra for training new EEs, that is, the technical university, is losing the societial investment and public policy that made it possible.

Do you really think that the university is going to be the bottleneck? I have to imagine that sometime in the next decade, there's going to be some big reorganization to reflect the fact that you can now learn just as well OUTSIDE of a university context. Credentials are going to become less important, standardized testing and examination far more.

In what way? RF test equipment is costly and so is building a home electronics lab.

Re: The quiet resurgence of RF engineering

#34

Post by solomonb »

atollk wrote: post #33

I never understand why posts like this do not start with explaining what they are talking about. I am not familiar with the abbreviation RF and I'm not going on a research quest to guess which one the author could mean.

https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=what+is+rf+engineering%3F

Re: The quiet resurgence of RF engineering

#35

Post by girvo »

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.

> 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 to: I miss doing firmware engineering. Gosh that is so much fun.

Re: The quiet resurgence of RF engineering

#36

Post by Joel_Mckay »

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/

Re: The quiet resurgence of RF engineering

#37

Post by chromacity »

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…

There's always the Juiceros of the world. More seriously, every software company of note has some hardware aspirations and hires some number of EEs, machinists, material scientists, etc. Not as many as SWEs, but if you can get your foot in the door, it's probably nice.

Re: The quiet resurgence of RF engineering

#38

Post by antonvs »

dTal wrote: post #5
cactacea wrote: post #3

> I've worked in the aerospace industry for the past 8 years, and for most of that time I felt like I could confidently say that RF engineering felt like it was a quiet, non evolving field. Not an EE myself but honestly baffled how the author got that impression with the huge expansion of RF engineering in the consumer space - particularly with 3/4/5G/LTE networks and 802.1x. Maybe this is just an artifact of working…

Bit older than 8 years but even cramming a working GPS reciever into a phone was a huge, nontrivial achievement.

Was it? My memory is that there were GPS watches (e.g. Garmin) before GPS became common in phones. Wasn't the miniaturization already there by the time phones started integrating GPS?

Re: The quiet resurgence of RF engineering

#39

Post by drtz »

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 in engineering difficulty and technical knowledge.

Re: The quiet resurgence of RF engineering

#40

Post by esseph »

amoshebb wrote: post #11
cactacea wrote: post #3

> I've worked in the aerospace industry for the past 8 years, and for most of that time I felt like I could confidently say that RF engineering felt like it was a quiet, non evolving field. Not an EE myself but honestly baffled how the author got that impression with the huge expansion of RF engineering in the consumer space - particularly with 3/4/5G/LTE networks and 802.1x. Maybe this is just an artifact of working…

Also ignoring the massive new market that has been automotive radars which, as a market, have totally eclipsed weapons

Anti-drone is sucking up a lot of time and money from a lot of people right now. Every country is looking for both defensive and offense tools.

Mil is huge

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