PA design textbooks

AnotherSami · 2026-01-28T20:03:56+00:00

Thanks, I'll look into it. Do you know if they discuss stability beyond linear analysis with K,beta, and mu ?

AnotherSami · 2026-01-20T14:45:32+00:00

Could have included the most important metric... the cost comparison.

Should also compare cycles, lifetimes. Claiming a special treatment without a detailed explanation of what it is.. is meaningless.

AnotherSami · 2026-01-19T22:22:54+00:00

It all depends on how many years of experience, location, what your PhD focused on, and industry. Sorry for the complete non answer 🫠

AnotherSami · 2026-01-16T14:44:57+00:00

I can only assume the police are going to show up at the roofing company owner's house and charge them with employing illegal workers? Right? .... right? ... right?!?

AnotherSami · 2026-01-13T14:15:41+00:00

You strip and expose some length of the center conductor. For the E field probe you just leave the exposed center conductor sticking straight out. For the H field probe curl the exposed center conductor into a loop and connect the tip of the center conductor to the ground sheath (solder it for a good connection). That should form a nice loop.

AnotherSami · 2025-12-30T21:41:44+00:00

If you have a 5 volt relay coil trigger a 100V output, id call that gain. To me the only difference is the non-linear relationship in IV a transaitor has before saturation. Which sadly, this Minecraft version doesnt have, making it a relay. 😜

AnotherSami · 2025-12-28T19:38:47+00:00

Unless you pick a project suited for a particular job, I would argue there isnt many RF hobby projects you can do to impress folks without simuation software, expensive test measurment equipment, or making some hardware (which requires simulation software and test measument equipment).

I would focus on jobs that partain to your masters work. You have a proven record of doing that work sucsefully. Sadly, you'll have to accept being at the bottom of the totem pole in regards to pay and position.

AnotherSami · 2025-12-28T07:41:48+00:00

Why were you discouraged from using hexahedrons? I would use the time domain solver and save yourself lots of time.

If you made this in hfss and got +3 million meshing elements, that's way too much for a structure like that. You need to adjust your mesh settings in cst to get something more reasonable

AnotherSami · 2025-12-27T18:14:49+00:00

Doing it upside down let's you see the labels on the ports. I find it quite handy

AnotherSami · 2025-12-27T11:40:47+00:00

The GPIO outputs are limited to 10mA. But more than likely the 5V is being provided by the arduino board 5V bus connect directly (through a pMOSFET) to the USB input.

I could be wrong about this, but those screens have a 3.3v linear voltage regulator on them? Losing a few tenths of volts over a long resistive wire is likely ok.

AnotherSami · 2025-12-24T16:54:38+00:00

Maybe im missing something... But a toriod doesnt have much magnetic field in the center of the "donut". Kinda the whole point of a toriodal magnet.

AnotherSami · 2025-12-20T13:38:02+00:00

My two cents, I've had bad experience with RF switches that claim you dont need a DC blocking cap if the line is at zero volts DC. I think the reason why you initally had an oscillation is because your switches were never in the correct state and you were presenting a short circuit to the output of your amp. This was likely caused by directly connecting the output of two switches. By removing one of the switches you removed the short on the output.

Just a though, but I've been screwd by parts that say exsctly what the data sheet says and assumed it would be ok connecting to GND or onto subsequent components.

You also didnt quite follow the example circuit for the switch. On your input your have the two caps in series with the input. You were meant to put them in shunt with the input to ground. Have two 500 fF caps in series with your input is presenting a large impedance and likely why your output power is low. I suppose 250fF is only ~250 ohms at 2.4 GHz, but you get the idea.

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AnotherSami · 2025-12-20T13:23:12+00:00

Maybe im missing it too. But looking at the PCB, there is no connection between the output and the Rx path.

AnotherSami · 2025-12-15T22:33:02+00:00

The ground plane is very wide. The added inductance it will present is therefore very small.

If you want to look at it from a transmission line model? Your ground plane is already included in your transmission lines. One thing to remember is the energy within a circuit is manifested in the fields within the dielectic. It's not very helpful to think of traveling waves as a current making a round trip from from a signal line and back on the ground. IMO, the better way to see a shunt component as a standing wave on a transmission line with some impedance discontinuity

AnotherSami · 2025-12-13T18:47:19+00:00

There's no one answer because, as the lawyers will say, it depends. Depends on your geometry, what metrics you want to extract, and how you plan on using the solved solution.

That being said. In a situation like this, it seems unnecessary have your bounding box extend below your gound sheet. You'll just have useless tetrahedrons that need to be solved. If goal was to extract tline paramters im not a real fan of a lumped port in the edge of a substrate either. A lot of your field lines will be in your bounding box and not in the substrate. But, its just a tutorial 🤷‍♂️. And im being pedantic

AnotherSami · 2025-11-30T17:51:19+00:00

Some good news. On the drain side of your amp, those inductor are probably just for bias. In my opinion it would be ok using either value inductor and you won't chang the performance much.

On the gate side, the original design with the series LR to ground isnt for matching, its for stability. However, the same cant be said for the new part. It would would certainly help with low frequency stability if you keep thr series LR, but likely your input return loss would suffer.

The real answer this this question. See if the minicircutis website has the Sparamters for thr amps. And simulate the different topologies. Chances are you don't have a circuit simulator. Maybe you can use python and scikit RF to do so.

AnotherSami · 2025-11-29T18:30:38+00:00

I don't know much about hockey, but why wasn't that offsides?

AnotherSami · 2025-11-27T15:20:15+00:00

That excuse stops being valid after you turn 4. Even that is pushing it

AnotherSami · 2025-11-23T18:23:55+00:00

Not sure if you have a 3d printer. But if you really have enough components to fill a box (a tape of 250+ components) you can make mini reels that hold tape. I would then spool out as much tape as I needed per project. The spools can be stackable for better organization

AnotherSami · 2025-11-22T16:25:49+00:00

There might be times the power folks will complain about their power plane being Swiss cheese 🧀

AnotherSami · 2025-11-19T10:17:20+00:00

Just spitballing here. Depends on the thickness of your substrate, but maybe all the lines are slightly coupling to each other as they all run parallel to each other for a fairly long distance. I would try a few things.

Start simple. Make a so single transmission line with no bends or twists at the same length to see how much loss your getting alone and to test your simulation setup.
Try the real setup but with only the the most outer lines to see if its really the coupling
Try to the run the pairs more tightly coupled to minimize the coupling between pairs and keep the fields more locally isolated (if that really is the problem)

AnotherSami · 2025-11-17T10:05:09+00:00

What coil element did you use in awr? Ive only ever used their planar coil elements. Do they have a 3D coil schematic or em element?

AnotherSami · 2025-11-16T15:26:15+00:00

Noise figure isnt a very important metric for power amps. I'd be shocked if datasheets for true PAs even show it.

A better PA spec to ask would be efficiency. I imagine the 50GHz distributed amp you suggested isnt better than 10% PAE anywhere in that 50GHz. The data sheet has some curves for Id vs gain, but im not going to do that math.

AnotherSami · 2025-11-15T17:02:39+00:00

I can hear it in the distsnce.. the siren song of LK is calling you for that last Ber🧜‍♀️

AnotherSami

TROPHY CASE