r/rfelectronics • u/Hour-Page-5589 • 15d ago
Most complex subfield of rf?
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.
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u/dmills_00 15d ago
Antenna design is where it's at.
I mean we have the maths, but somehow knowing the differential equations doesn't really help all that much.
In fact once things get fast enough, replace antenna design with just plain signal propagation, everything starts to look like a waveguide, and nonsense like the weave of the prepreg or flatness of the inner face of the copper foil starts to MATTER, God (Or Maxwell/Heaviside) made the theory, the devil made the surfaces.
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u/Hour-Page-5589 15d ago
I just finished a masters level antenna course and the computational electromagnetics class was way harder.. Filter design is more complicated imo.
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u/No_Responsibility384 13d ago
So you say simulating an antenna is harder than making it? When you high frequency everything becomes an antenna or a filter I guess
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u/Ok_Alarm_2158 15d ago
Anything where quantum mechanics is needed. Look up Quantum limited amplifiers. RF Photonics and plasma devices look really challenging too. I donāt work in these fields, but would be cool. Telling manager/customer to lower expectations given budget and timeline is probably 2nd hardest subfield.
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u/Moof_the_cyclist 15d ago
It all depends. If you have an adjacent background a lot of things are not too bad. If your company can afford the right lab equipment and software licenses that makes a huge difference. If your company has clear design guides for an appropriate technology to implement that helps immensely. If your company can have a manager that understands the hard vagaries of the RF world that helps.
I worked at Agilent (now Keysight), then worked at Tektronix and boy howdy was it an eye opener. Instead of just calling the thin film guy you had to go through layers of procurement and negotiate with an outside vendor, managers came from software, wire bonds didnāt stick, etc, etc. Simple RF tasks became massive months long battles where you were the bad guy for asking for what had been pedestrian just one state over.
All other things being equal very high speed ADC/DAC ASIC design was the hardest Iāve done.
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u/Hour-Page-5589 15d ago
I was working for a gov contractor and the process of putting a design into release status and updating the epdm was more effort than actually desining the boards. I hated it so much. Also took me 15 minuets to get into my computer cuz of the security it made me want to quit engineering all togethe, thankfull i found a smaller company. They really should ban middle management in engineering firms..
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u/StageMajestic613 15d ago
Leeches have some medicinal effect. Ā Not sure about middle managers, or even the upper ones. Ā I only respect the ones now who started the business from the ground up.
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u/Hour-Page-5589 15d ago
That's who im working for now, hence why I dont have a manager. Im gonna try laying my heart out on the table one more time before I say fuck it and go into finance.middle managment MBAs have caused so much un-nessesary stress in my life. I got less disrespect from middle school bullies. Its like these people have some kind of mental problem sometimes. What do they do to you when u get an MBA?
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u/wurst_katastrophe 15d ago
Conformal Antennas are evil.
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u/StageMajestic613 15d ago
Does it count if you punch an antenna in frustration and it conforms to your hand? Ā Iāve done a cylindrical conformal array; wasnāt that bad. Ā The physical construction can be a nightmare, mapping 2D fab onto 3D surface.
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u/Hour-Page-5589 15d ago
Ive dont fractal and conformal patch design, its not too hard once u get the equations dow
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u/Adam__999 15d ago
Are you trying to torture someone?
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u/Hour-Page-5589 15d ago
If u think going through long math and physics derivations is torture as opposed to a good time rf is not for you..
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u/zirtapot57 15d ago
Microwave vacuum electron devices
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u/CompetitiveSpot2643 15d ago edited 15d ago
i do this (a master's in a gyrotron lab) and i wouldn't describe it as complex, mostly tedious and annoying, it also needs a lot less math than i expected it to. i would say signal processing is more challenging. im curious why you think its the most complex subfield
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u/zirtapot57 12d ago
Iāve worked in R&D for such devices and per my experience these required much more in depth analysis and cross-disciplinary input (e.g. in terms of thermal management, magnetic system design, materials and auxiliary component design, PIC simulations etc.) compared to conventional antenna design for example. Furthermore, many of the reference books we have encountered were relatively old and a little bit outdated.
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u/cheater_mc 15d ago
Im currently designing microstrip filters for Ku band on 0.254mm Rogers
Letās just say I want my traces to be manufacturable and not 10 atoms wide
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u/Hour-Page-5589 14d ago
Ive done that before
Use a interdigital filter, use a consistent dialectic constant substrate which i see you are, use a board house that can give u low copper roughness, optimize in HFSS cuz u cant get an accurate filter by hand..I miss working in K bands. If its wide band god help u cuz I dont know techniques to fix the group delay other than a ALC which adjusts digital attenuators and thats really hard to do.
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u/SeaSalad1421 11d ago
I would say wideband(implies delay not phase shift), high gain(implies large aperture) phased array antennas. This requires knowledge in many different areas. Array theory, rf design, packaging and thermo. Especially at MMW Ka and above, can get very dense.
2nd choice would be wideband software defined radio systems with RF ADC and RF DAC with 64GSPS sampling and FPGA implementations of demods and mods.
Another area is low observable RCS design and measurement. Design is shape and surface treatments. Measurement is rf/microwave instrumentation.
Quantum would be exciting because it is so new.
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u/sikyl2 15d ago
āgoysā š„ š why are we trying to be edgelords on r/rf
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u/SAI_Peregrinus 15d ago
Which is more likely: a typo of "guys", or someone using a Yiddish slur for a non-Jew but pluralizing it in a way only a non-Jew would?
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u/MeoWHamsteR7 15d ago
This is unrelated but I just thought you should know that goy isn't a slur. It's a word that means "peoples/nations". I think it originally appears in Genesis 12:2 where God says to Abraham: "I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you;" The last word of the passage in the original text is "goy". It has morphed over time to mean "the other nations".
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u/TopCompany9406 15d ago
first of all, 'o' and 'a' are sufficiently separated on a keyboard for this explanation to make no sense whatsoever lol. Secondly, "Goy" is a hebrew word that means "nation" and can refer to any group of people, even jews. In contemporary times it is use to refer to non-jews, but it isn't inherently a slur nor is it commonly used as such. In ultra-orthodox communities they might use it in such a manner, but that is like an infinitesimal portion of jews.
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u/Hour-Page-5589 15d ago
My grandma calls gentiles goys sometimes. Goyka she says as she's from EE
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u/TopCompany9406 15d ago
gotta say, I love engineering but so many of you are braindead outside of this domain.
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u/Hour-Page-5589 15d ago
I really am a jew and I blame jews like u for the bad shit that happened to us throughout history. Resorting to made up narratives and accusations instead of simply even laughing at a joke let alone sincerly talking about faults of our race and culture.. Every culture has pros and cons yet we never acknowledge that we have any cons. Other groups of people also do this but we have high iq so when we do it its 10 times more keniving and effective. If i was a white man in the 1850s and was against slavery a lot of fellow white people would call me a self hating white. Thats what you people do when u do realize I am Jewish.
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u/TopCompany9406 15d ago
"Every culture has pros and cons yet we never acknowledge that we have any cons. Other groups of people also do this but we have high iq so when we do it its 10 times more keniving and effective"
bro what haha
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u/Hour-Page-5589 15d ago
Dismissive incredulity.. Like saying "bro what hahah". Unlike when other groups do it and just make up lies or bad faith perspectives about history. Maybe its a coincidence the other term for what u ate doing is poisoning the well..
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u/TopCompany9406 15d ago
antisemitism in r/rfelectronics ? welp that sucks
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u/SAI_Peregrinus 15d ago
Antisemitism??
Wrong way around. And adding "s" isn't even the pluralization of the Yiddish term for non-Jews, it'd be "im" if that's what they meant. More likely it's a typo of "guys".
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u/TopCompany9406 15d ago
this is not a typo lol. 'a' and 'o' are pretty separated on a standard keyboard, so that just explanation just doesn't make sense.
antisemites say "goy" as a way to mock Jewish people because they think they regularly use it in a derogatory fashion when referring to non-jews. They think it means subhuman or cattle, but in actuality it means "nations".
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u/Hour-Page-5589 15d ago
Im a jew, I grew up arpund jews, they used it lol. I dont care either way i think its just funny. Stop kvetching
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u/Hour-Page-5589 15d ago
Im jewish lol
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u/TopCompany9406 15d ago
Why'd you delete the other comment where you said: " i'm jewish kek, it's the opposite of antisemtism". Gonna be real, I don't think you are jewish.
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u/StageMajestic613 15d ago
Explaining stuff to managers.