> I've worked in the aerospace industry for the past 8 years, and for most of that time I felt like I could confidently say that RF engineering felt like it was a quiet, non evolving field.

Not an EE myself but honestly baffled how the author got that impression with the huge expansion of RF engineering in the consumer space - particularly with 3/4/5G/LTE networks and 802.1x. Maybe this is just an artifact of working on building weapons (i.e. defense) and being in the US?

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saltcured 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Isn't the issue that this kind of RF is a lot like designing CPUs? There aren't many economically viable products that don't just use a COTS highly integrated circuit, so there aren't that many full on design jobs to go along with all the usage.

The product work is higher level system packaging, such as antennas and application-level manipulation of the whole RF block. But since so much is digital now, that is more software/computer architecture work rather than RF. The COTS RF circuit itself may have standardized serial or even packet interfaces to the rest of the product.

	▲	willis936 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I'm not an RF insider, but RFSoCs and deep budgets are a thing. I don't really see this as a constraint. If you are budget constrained then you just design your signal chain in discretes like everyone else.

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amoshebb 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Also ignoring the massive new market that has been automotive radars which, as a market, have totally eclipsed weapons

	▲	greggsy 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It’s a big market but theres only a handful of use cases and R&D requirements, compared to military where the use cases and niche requirements are still continually evolving. Mil systems have severely constrained supply chain limitations too, while consumer vehicle systems can comfortably be produced in their millions from China.
	▲	esseph 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Anti-drone is sucking up a lot of time and money from a lot of people right now. Every country is looking for both defensive and offense tools. Mil is huge

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loodish 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Not an EE myself but honestly baffled how the author got that impression with the huge expansion of RF engineering in the consumer space -

Lots of RF devices doesn't actually mean much RF engineering.

If you want 5G connectivity almost everyone buys an integrated module. Chip, antenna, and certifications included. No serious RF engineering required, no RF engineer in the building.

Those modules designers would be purchasing their chip from one of a few companies, like Qualcomm or MediaTek. Even then most of the work isn't RF engineering, it's stitching together a product and grinding through the certifications.

Much of the innovation is done away from the consumer space where certifications are less constraining.

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dTal 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Bit older than 8 years but even cramming a working GPS reciever into a phone was a huge, nontrivial achievement.

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antonvs 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Was it? My memory is that there were GPS watches (e.g. Garmin) before GPS became common in phones. Wasn't the miniaturization already there by the time phones started integrating GPS?

	▲	angry_octet an hour ago \| parent [-]
		It's all about power -- the computation required for processing the signal in the presence of noise, multi path fading etc. The RF part is not the limitation.

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bigfatkitten 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Even in defense, the advancements being made in fields like radar are incredible.

	▲	idkyall 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Radar improvements have also propagated to consumer fields. You can buy a mmWave presence sensor for smart home purposes for ~$40 on Amazon, and the raw sensors for $2-4 in bulk from Aliexpress. I remember seeing tech demos of mmWave in college used for imaging humans through tent fabric and dust storms, and now they're cheap enough you could put one in every room of your house.