RF & Microwave

Waves, lines, antennas and radar. High-frequency engineering: RF fundamentals and link budgets, transmission lines and matching, antennas, waveguides, microwave devices and amplifiers, and radar systems from pulse radar to 77 GHz automotive FMCW.

• RF Fundamentals — Radio-frequency engineering deals with signals whose wavelength is comparable to circuit dimensions. Learn frequency bands, wavelength, dB/dBm/dBi, free-space path loss and the Friis link budget, impedance matching, reflection coefficient, VSWR and return loss, and the building blocks of RF transceivers.
• Transmission Lines — At high frequencies, interconnects behave as transmission lines. Learn distributed L and C, characteristic impedance, propagation velocity and velocity factor, coax, twisted pair, microstrip and stripline, reflections and standing waves, input impedance of loaded lines, quarter-wave transformers, stubs, and signal-integrity rules.
• Antennas — Antennas convert guided signals into radiated waves. Learn radiation, near and far fields, dipoles and monopoles, patch, Yagi, horn and parabolic dish antennas, gain, directivity, beamwidth, efficiency, polarisation, input impedance and bandwidth, and arrays with beam steering.
• Waveguides — Hollow metal pipes guide microwaves with very low loss and high power handling. Learn TE and TM modes, cutoff frequency, the dominant TE₁₀ mode in rectangular guides, standard WR sizes, guide wavelength, phase and group velocity, circular guides, and components (bends, couplers, cavities).
• Microwave Devices — Devices that generate, amplify and control microwaves. Learn vacuum tubes (magnetron, klystron, TWT), solid-state devices (Gunn, IMPATT, PIN, varactor diodes; GaAs/GaN HEMTs, SiGe HBTs), MMICs, power-amplifier efficiency (PAE), noise figure cascades (Friis), and passive components (circulators, isolators, couplers).
• Radar — Radar detects and measures objects using radio echoes. Learn pulse radar ranging, range resolution, PRF and maximum unambiguous range, the radar equation, radar cross-section, Doppler velocity, FMCW radar (automotive), pulse compression, clutter and MTI, and modern phased-array and imaging radars.