Re: A RF studen's question
Hi,
I agree with Flatulent, you should really like very much what you do or you will after some time need to change. Microwaves are, as most of the hot engineering subject, the art of solving various problems. If you are chalenged with this, you are on the right track. If you are terrified when having problems, go for another profession!
There is a strong belief that since the RFICs and MMICs are so cheep and easy to use, there will be no job for microwave designers. Have you really try some MMIC? Some of them work OK for you becouse you are using them exactly as they are planned to be used (same frequencies, power levels, substrates, temperatures etc.). Sometimes you have to modify the working conditions just slightly and the circuit will simply not work as expected!
Some of MMICs/RFICs will never ever show the performances declared by the manufacturer, no matter how hard you try. The typical values from datasheets are sometimes far to be typical. I had personal experience with a 1W MMIC amplifier that was working perfectly for 3-5 seconds and that will burn itself. The company that was manufacturing it become bankrupt after 6 months.
Sometimes you will find everything working well in an evaluation PCB that is 5x5cm for a MMIC chip having 3x3mm. Try shrinking the board or moving from microstrip to CPW. You are sometimes need a PhD to make this step! If you are bying 1 milion pieces or similar quantities of component a manufacturer might help, but are you buing that much?
These are just a few of examples that I had experienced, can give much more. So, after all I am not worried, there will always be a lot of jobs for RF/microwave engineers. The amount of problems solved by RFIC/MMICs is proportional to problems arise from their applications/adaptations. Anyway, the technology is going forward but the requirements/specifications are the ones that are really pushing the whole thing forward. The more solved problems you have in MMICs, the more complex applications you want to create.
Finally, RFICs and MMICS are made by engineers as well, foundries are now available to wide engineering public and are not a black art any more. So, we might all end up making MMICs?
flyhigh