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I think that small design houses have less oppoturnity to invest in advanced CMOS RFIC except you have a rich-farther and your objective is to develop high-end RFIC.
I think BiCMOS is here to stay at least for a while, it might not offer highly-integrated SoC solutions but the performance/cost is actually attractive for stand-alone RF blocks. I think a company with its own advanced BiCMOS fab can compete very will in the area. Also, it would take less design time for a new product for a BiCMOS SiP solution rather than a CMOS SoC solution.
CMOS is the best choice if cost, size, and integration are the absolute need given that the design can meet the specs in very high-volume markets. However CMOS SoC designs needs a lot of designers man-hour and can be risky (but rewarding) especially for smaller design houses. Some companies do not want to take risks and stay with smaller markets.
By the way, RFIC is not only about device technologies and I think working either in CMOS or BiCMOS should be fine. The issue nowadays is that not many places actually hire new graduates for RFIC jobs.
Currently, I am a RF CAD Engineer, I intend moving to RF IC design before the end of the year. Maybe I have been a little naive, but I have noticed that RF design lecture material is surprisingly easy to download from respectable academic institutions. Just wonder if there really is a serious downward shift in the market for these skills or is it just as easy to download material for any discipline from these institutions? Maybe there is too much paranoia about declining RF Design skill currency and too little emphasis on imagination and innovation?
The site you recommend **broken link removed** not bad and in fact I had a good rummage through the material. However, I tried to follow some of the design procedures and found the material to be falling short, not thorough enough in explanation or reason and in some cases just plain absent. I went as far as emailing the creator of the site to get him to explain a few things only for him to admit not having Industrial RFIC CMOS experience. Now, I prefer to rummage through the open access academic material I come across and yes, MIT/Stanford/Berkeley comes up with good material... In any case, thanks for the advice, appreciated.
some of my friends just start working in north america as RFIC design engineer, and they just got their master degree without any experience. There are still something they can do, otherwise those companies wont hire them.
companies hire students with no experience because it is cheap to pay someone with no experience rather than a person with 15. many companies i have seen fire older workers to replace them with younger ones, also younger workers are not married and when they have no kids, work long hours.
otherwise, there are projects to do, but the competition is very tough (many companies, too few customers) and the cost of doing business is very high.
very hard to get into this industry and not a lot of customers left.
not trying to be negative just what i see while working, in the financial markets and with companies.
let me tell u what happened in taiwan.
there were not so many rf designers 10 yrs ago, and design houses asked professors in microwave or analog ic to research and train more ppl to work in rf field. professors tend to tell others what they have done, so u can download everything on the internet
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