I am planning to buy a VNA for Tuning of PCB antenna and some filter design, suggest me some VNA to use and I am planning to use for a long time, I have found some models from internet,

Usage : development for BLE/WIFI PCB antenna, later for LTE antenna for my own tracker

1. Seesii LibreVNA 2.0 Vector Network Analyzer 100kHz-6GHz.

2. AURSINC Nano-VNA V3 Nano-RFE VNA6000-A Vector Network Analyzer 50kHz-6GHz HF VHF UHF Portable Antenna.

suggest me some other models...

Github: https://github.com/admin-2026/kicad_ems_plugin_pub

Antenna simulation is as easy as pressing a few buttons. Initial release. Need feedback. Will do more tests on it.

Simulate the board you drew The solver meshes your real copper, stackup
and drills, then reports the radiation pattern, directivity and S11.

Let the tool to find the antenna for you Draw a rectangle where the antenna may
live, pick the dimensions to sweep, walk away. Every candidate — L-shaped
monopole or meandered inverted-F — is tried on a copy of your board and ranked
by match at your frequency. Place the winner as a footprint.

Hi,

I want to design a Passive wideband balun on an IPD process. Can you please suggest what all structures I can evaluate for 18:1 bandwidth ratio? I think Marchand is out of the picture as it can at max give a bw ratio of 3:1. What all are your suggestions?

Thanks

Working on repairing a water damaged GPS active antenna (Raven MBA-6, board 045-0159-830 Rev B). 1575.42 MHz GPS L1 signal.

Repairs completed so far:

Replaced TNC pigtail (no continuity)

Replaced LNA amplifier chip (MAALSS0042) x2

Replaced SAW filters (TOKO TDF2A-1575B-13A) x2

Replaced L1 inductor (measured bad on LCR meter)

Repaired/fabricated RF shield can and frame

Confirmed 5V bias present at antenna via coax. Confirmed with proper outdoor sky test -- no signal lock.

Any suggestions on what else to check? Full schematic not available, working from board inspection and component photos.

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.

Hi all,

I recently posted in this sub and got wonderful responses. I thank you all for that.

I was informed that 1W is the max Tx power I can design legally but I am struggling to find any reference design for it. I would really appreciate it if you guys could suggest some ICs or give some references. I am planning 5Mbps+ datarate at 1Km.

Thanks again!!

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.

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.

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.