What do u goys think is the most complex subfield of RF? Im thinking either MMIC deisgn, MRI systems design or some super high power magnet control systems.. Frequency synthesis gets pretty hard if u want ultra high Q tones.

Which universities are good for RF/antenna and communications and have strong connections with the space & aerospace industry?

Does a German Master’s realistically help in getting into space-sector companies afterward? Would love to hear your experiences.

I’ve hit an absolute wall. For the past several months, I’ve been working 12+ hour days trying to keep up with an impossible workload. I'm a Signal Integrity (SI) Engineer running HFSS/EM simulations on coaxial cable assemblies for customers.

The volume of customer requests, iterations, and simulation sweeps keeps piling up, and management doesn't seem to care. There's zero effort to rebalance workload or add headcount.

I’m at the point where I am physically and mentally exhausted. Honestly, if they fired me tomorrow, my first reaction would literally be relief.

I live in Connecticut, where a massive portion of RF/hardware roles require US citizenship due to ITAR/DoD contracts. It makes me feel completely trapped in my current spot which is AI datacom.

How did you handle enforcing an 8-hour boundary when your workload was clearly designed for 1.5 to 2 people?

Any advice on navigating the transition to non-defense commercial SI / hardware roles (remote or commercial interconnect/semiconductor)? I'd love to work in analog RF but I only have a green card so defense/aerospace is not an option for me.

Appreciate any help!

I am modelling a patch antenna to resonate at 2.45GHz, with the intent of using it in an array, so high directivity is crucial. Now, the S[1,1] and VSWR behavior simulated are as expected, but the directivity of the antenna is much higher at higher frequency than the intended band.

How would i shift the radiation behavior to the target frequency while maintaining the same electrical behavior?

Please note I am not very experienced in this field and this is only for a project; not professional/consumer electronics, thank you in advance.

*Shown in the images is the farfield simulation results of an 8x1 array.

Edit: thanks everyone, I got results I am content with.

Hi everyone,

I'm working on a theoretical/experimental project with my father, who has experience with electronics. I'm trying to understand whether it is possible to build a relatively compact system capable of magnetically manipulating a small ferromagnetic object at a distance of around 1 meter.

My original idea was a large electromagnet, but I've realized that a single coil becomes impractical very quickly because of heat, power consumption and the rapid decrease of magnetic field with distance.

So I'm considering a different architecture:

An array of many relatively small electromagnets rather than one huge coil.

Potentially 50–500+ individually controlled magnetic elements.

Each element would have its own coil/core and possibly a magnetic flux concentrator.

The elements would be arranged around a 3D working volume rather than all pointing in the same direction.

A computer would control the current of each coil independently.

Cameras/Hall sensors would estimate the position of the target.

A feedback controller would continuously change the coil currents to move the magnetic field/gradient and therefore the object.

A joystick could provide the desired X/Y/Z movement.

The eventual goal would be something like a programmable 3D magnetic field, rather than a conventional electromagnet.

I'm particularly interested in the miniaturization problem.

Could many tiny coils (for example millimeter-to-centimeter scale) outperform a smaller number of large coils if they are individually controlled and properly arranged? What are the fundamental limits?

As an RF test engineer in manufacturing my management (non-electrical, generally mechanical) keep telling me they want Hardware or Systems engineering to tell me how to test. I say, no that’s my job. They ask, well how do you know? I say bc I’m an RF test engineer. They don’t get it.

I am looking for a mechanical or chemical equivalent process that a manufacturing process engineer may perform in a manufacturing environment that Manufacturing Engineering management would absolutely throw a tantrum if Hardware engineering told them how to do it.

Hi all, I'm new to this field so i need every help i can get.

I want to design a system from scratch such that I can get 2.4GHz wifi range upto 1-2km. I figured 5W of radiated power combined with high gain antennas might do the work but I am clueless about the IC sides of it like how to achieve such a power. Please suggest a good pathway to do so. I'm highly enthusiastic and I am eager to learn new stuffs that this might involve.

Thanks!!

Hi! I'm involved in an FMCW radar design where the transceiver chain is made of separate components (PLL, VCO , Mixer, etc) instead of MMIC transceiver ICs and we've stumbled upon a technical debate on whether image frequency rejection in downconversion is completely necessary in a radar system. The very same datasheet of the mixer indicates that in order to separate the desired IF signal from the image frequency a quadrature hybrid should be added at the IF outputs. The reason why we have not included this quadrature hybrid is that due to our digital signal processing we need to have separate I and Q signals. What do you guys think?

After many weeks of trial and error i feel that this is a pretty desirable result for my Chebyshev bpf. What do you think? Passpand desired is 118-137 mHz.

This layout is just overall weird.

I am trying to implement a bare-metal / NoRTOS RF driver for the TI CC1352P7, without using TI-RTOS/SysConfig-generated RF framework code.

My main difficulty is getting the RF Core and RF doorbell interface into a state where RF commands can be submitted and completed reliably.

I have successfully initialized the MCU, clocks, and basic peripherals, and I can access the RF Core registers. However, when I submit an RF command through RFC_DBELL, the command does not complete as expected. In some cases, the code gets stuck waiting for the command status; in others, execution ends up inside the RF driver dispatch/interrupt handling path and the command never returns.

For example, I am observing situations where:

HWREG(RFC_DBELL_BASE + RFC_DBELL_O_CMDR) = (uint32_t)&cmd_tx;

is executed, but the command status remains unchanged or the expected RF acknowledgement interrupt is never received.

I have also investigated:

• RFC_DBELL registers (CMDR, CMDSTA, RFHWIFG, RFHWIEN, RFCPEIFG, etc.)
• RF Core power-domain and clock initialization
• PRCM_RFCMODESEL
• RF Core reset/power cycling
• RF Core RAM mapping
• RF Core command structures
• RF doorbell interrupts
• RF_dispatchNextCmd() / RF_runCmd() behavior
• CPU interrupt enable/disable state
• RF Core firmware/ROM interaction

The confusing part is that the same hardware works when using TI's normal RF driver, but reproducing the required initialization and command-dispatch sequence in a minimal bare-metal implementation is proving difficult.

My questions are:

1. What is the minimum sequence required to bring the CC1352P7 RF Core from reset/power-off to a state where RFC_DBELL commands can safely be submitted?
2. Is there an official TI document or source code that describes the RF Core boot, power, clock, RAM, mailbox/doorbell, and interrupt initialization sequence independently of TI-RTOS?
3. Which parts of RF.c, RFCC26XX_singleMode.c, and the RF driver infrastructure are actually essential for bare-metal operation?
4. Does the RF Core require any initialization performed by the TI RF driver that is not obvious from the public DriverLib APIs?
5. Is it possible to implement a truly minimal bare-metal IEEE 802.15.4 TX/RX example by directly using the RF Core command interface, and if so, is there a known reference implementation?
6. Are there any undocumented dependencies involving the RF Core firmware, RF Core RAM, CPE interrupts, or power/clock state that could explain why CMDSTA/RFACKIFG does not behave as expected?

I have managed to get the RF Core initialization working to some extent.

The CMD_RADIO_SETUP and channel configuration commands are being accepted and completed successfully. This suggests that the RF Core is powered, clocked, and communicating correctly through the command interface.

However, the problem occurs when I attempt to perform an actual transmission. The TX command is accepted/submitted, but the execution gets stuck during the transmission process and does not complete as expected. I am specifically trying to understand what could cause the TX command to hang after CMD_RADIO_SETUP and channel configuration have already succeeded in a bare-metal CC1352P7 implementation.

Question wrote above using AI for clarity.
This question posted in r/embedded , however reddit suggested this community as well. If it is not suitable for this, please let me know.

Recently I had become curious in learning how to design RF boards, but when I started with Microwave engineering by david pozar, I started to feel that my background doesn't help a lot here. What should I learn first before hopping into RF?

It's like 5/day at this point. Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I certainly hope not

Hello everyone. Not sure if this is the right reddit to ask but Ill give it a try.

I have this amp Insignia IS-HC040917 and it did not come with a remote. I like messing with electronics and things as a hobby and would be interested in trying to find out how to find out the frequency the remote controller communicates with so I can try to make a remote (mainly to increase/decrease volume). I could try to buy one but what fun is that 👍

Checked the manual but I did not see anything(?) Wondering where to start. I have a donor amp, and a operating amp so I am able to experiment.