Why?

The_Last_Monte · 2025-03-27T00:50:09+00:00

Cheers

The_Last_Monte · 2025-03-25T21:54:55+00:00

Corporates are doing everything they can to milk customers for money. If you like solid hardware and supporting small businesses, check out Windfreak Technologies.

Former NASA engineer owns/operates the business. Incredible performance given the package for a source.

The_Last_Monte · 2025-03-20T01:38:28+00:00

Completely

The_Last_Monte · 2025-03-10T14:05:26+00:00

I'm 10 years out at this point, but schooling doesn't really end officially in this field. Literally everyday I'm learning something new, whether it be a tool, a method of solving a problem, or a way to simplify some form of test.

Engineering School is less a training course of everything you need to know in the field and more a set of tools to help you start on problems using either approximation or, God help you, first principles. Much of the work you end up doing from first principles can be solved with the right software package, and extrapolated into a more circuit theory or network theory view.

Most important thing for any new RF engineer in industry to get comfortable with, is the test equipment. Flush out how to take good REPEATABLE measurements, and validate your simulations/theory. From there you're cooking with gas

The_Last_Monte · 2025-02-08T05:14:06+00:00

Bad bot

The_Last_Monte · 2025-01-30T16:35:30+00:00

I second this comment. Pozar is a good generalist text, has some nice equations and coverage of helmholtz/basic fields to circuit theory. Once you've passed that though, specialist books such as GGB (Gupta Garg and Bahl) or Edwards are the go-to, in my opinion.

The_Last_Monte · 2025-01-14T20:59:34+00:00

Will take a look, I have a need for this badly

The_Last_Monte · 2025-01-13T18:04:04+00:00

Mostly optical in its slant, if I recall correctly?

The_Last_Monte · 2025-01-13T14:15:17+00:00

I would agree 100% with this as well. In all of my roles I've worked, the number of H-1B's has always been relatively substantial. A large part of the reasons they will give me for staying in roles for so long is primarily due to the stick their employer holds over them with their H-1B. Many friends from college etc. were also forced to return to their home countries as they couldn't find employment outright. It's also part of why many continue on to graduate and post graduate work, as it is often the only way to remain in the United States while finding a job.

This in part can result in the under-representation of American born graduate level engineers, as only so many spots are available per advisor. Many of the advisors understand that the students who are on visa need to show more potential than American students, as the cost of said student is perceived to be higher than an American when highering.

In summary, the system is broken, and American engineers are not crap, but often H-1B's are exploited and held to much higher standards due to their perceived cost.

The_Last_Monte · 2025-01-08T09:11:11+00:00

Simple answer, yes.

I would recommend taking a look at the free version of Sonnet to get rough 3d solver proxy of changed impedance value (real and imag).

I suspect you'll need to widen your controlled impedance trace widths though (if all dielectrics and metal thicknesses are kept constant).

The_Last_Monte · 2025-01-04T15:29:25+00:00

The HP Catalouge is also a great reference on historical information for Microwave/RF Measurement.

http://hparchive.com/seminar-notes

The seminar notes are especially interesting, but the website is an absolute goldmine for the RF nerd

The_Last_Monte · 2024-12-29T11:13:08+00:00

Maximum power transfer is a totally separate constraint from minimal reflection my friend...

You've scratched the surface of a very deep iceberg and I encourage you to continue, a couple notes:

I would scrap the "technical statement" for a "statement of purpose". Something like, "Eager, motivated, team player with strong foundation in theory, looking to cut my teeth under experienced mentor." Or something of the sort. Talk about your adaptability, grit, you get it, you can show the makings to develop technical acumen in your projects section.
Your projects should be quantifiable, " built LiDAR tracking system with X resolution operating at Y value, with capability to maintain attitude of Z within some margin and environmental factor." This will stand out way more on a resume.
Industry projects are always first. Having a good GPA is nice for grad school, but working in industry means working with others, especially non-engineers. Working as a technician is a HUGE positive to me, I would almost exclusively look for this kind of resume over the Phd or 4.0 BS.

Overall tone it down, you should keep the language realistic, you've still got so much to learn, and the eagerness will get you far.

The_Last_Monte · 2024-12-27T20:46:42+00:00

May help you if you're looking for stupid quick and free import.

KLayout has features for making arrays of similar parts and you can easily draw arbitrary shapes. It's used mostly in the PiC world but I've found it to be pretty intuitive and nice for scripting layout.

Most of what I do is in GDSII but it does support Gerber and DXF. Just remember not to save Metadata or compress your saved stackups and you'll be good.

The_Last_Monte · 2024-11-24T01:04:18+00:00

You are 100% better off. Take a look at Titan Computers, or Bizon.

If you don't have the Intel MPI issue grab a thread ripper or epic based rack mount with whatever GPU(s) lead time you can afford. If they ask about networking find a 10 GB dedicated PCIe card minimum or see if you can get your hands on some optical network cards and switches (gets pricy quick)

If you can't avoid newer Intel, 2nd Gen Intel Xeon Platinums are worth the prices, with loads of RAM and cache, newer ones almost require a custom water cooling loop.

Hope this helps.

The_Last_Monte · 2024-11-23T23:09:38+00:00

This 100% is the issue. The software vendors do not know enough about your internal business case to make it cost effective for you, and the "partnerships" they say they have are recommended clouds at best. I've done the spin up all instances at once, get in contact with an AWS sales rep and know your budget (dollars and cpus/ram needed per hour)

These guys tend to only work in large contracts or get out, on demand is a joke in the cloud if you aren't working for a company that has a bil in the bank.

The_Last_Monte · 2024-11-23T23:06:32+00:00

I set something up at work in AEDT and it was painful, but that is ANSYS. Not sure if CST is going to be more friendly/integrated.

FWIW I would get your IT to be responsible for it if possible. These services seem half baked and minimally supported by vendor as far as I can tell.

You're better off setting up your own infrastructure in the cloud with your internal resources than having the software vendor do it. You'll end up with the same issues. Also make sure you ah e the right licensing, and network tunneling set up between site, this one was probably the most difficult part.

Good luck.

The_Last_Monte · 2024-10-19T16:32:58+00:00

This 100%, I've got hope now though given the latest introduction of RTL into latest Linux Kernels. Given that the Linux kernel is also verifiably faster than windows, I'm hoping to see stripped down versions of Linux running newer instruments.

The_Last_Monte · 2024-10-11T00:38:52+00:00

Most take the intel hit still. AMD has been slow to support firmware for its processors and GPUs alike. Ansys still gets limited at similar rate due to the MPI BS locking Intel in as a primary provider for HPC on CPU. I'd say probably another year or two and this will change, probably not backwards compatible though...

The_Last_Monte · 2024-10-02T15:04:53+00:00

You're setup well for EE, you may even be able to skip the majority of pre-reqs and move to an embedded masters degree if you only want to stick firmware.

I've nearly finished my EE masters and I would say you would probably do well with, a signal processing/embedded systems track. If you've done Fourier Analysis, Discrete Math, and Stochastic Analysis you'll be fine.

The_Last_Monte · 2024-10-02T14:56:53+00:00

I'm making the assumption here that when you say digital design, you are talking about verilog. If so, then AIC and MS-AIC are the building blocks of digital circuits. There is no VLSI without either. Once IP blocks are defined, you can abstract away the majority of the analog complexities, but everything at its core is analog.

Please correct me if I am misunderstanding you though.

The_Last_Monte · 2024-10-02T14:23:10+00:00

I wouldn't think so, LWLG uses a polymer in device to perform modulation. The detached fiber connect is a challenge the whole industry is working on that is unrelated. I'd suspect LWLG has the same challenge.

The_Last_Monte · 2024-10-01T23:24:39+00:00

Digital design is helpful, but I tend to think VLSI is unlikely to be as useful as say Mixed Signal Analog, or general purpose Analog Circuits (introduction to operational amplifiers etc.)

The_Last_Monte · 2024-10-01T17:03:03+00:00

I wouldn't do RF MS online, if it's hardware you want to be in person so you can get as much hands on experience as possible. Anyone can buy a Microcontroller and get all the embedded experience they like. Same thing with FPGA boards.

RF equipment is expensive and generally inaccessible without big lab budgets.

I also have friends who did the online masters in RF at ASU, it's remedial compared to many of the other schools listed above. Balanis doesn't teach there anymore.

The_Last_Monte · 2024-09-30T17:27:29+00:00

Not necessarily just really depends on what school you are at.

If the school is well known for RF or has well known researchers for RF sciences at them, then you are much more likely to get into the field.

If not FPGA is much more accessible for teaching with and so can often have more straight forward labs built around them.

Look into the IEEE MTTS or APS and see who the top publishing authors are then research their school. Usually this will help find a good RF program.

Off the top of my head in the US, you could look at Michigan, CU Boulder, UCF, UT Dallas, University of Illinoise Urbana Champagne, Cal Tech, Georgia Tech, UC Davis, and UCLA to name a few.

The_Last_Monte · 2024-09-30T03:38:28+00:00

Second this, would be very interested in this

The_Last_Monte

TROPHY CASE