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6 Barriers to RF Engineering RF engineering is often seen as a dark art—one that is perceived as requiring years of experience and expertise. This is because the chain of components needed to move data from base radios to remote users is complex and requires many different areas of expertise: RF physics, printed circuit board (PCB) design, PCB layout and routing, and power systems design, among others. In recent years, requirements from the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) have only increased the areas of expertise needed. The evolving nature of RF design requires understanding of SoCs, software interaction with calibration and correction algorithms, field-programmable gate array (FPGA) programming, software-defined radio concepts, multi-antenna design, and 5G mathematics, among others. For these reasons, RF engineering requires a relatively long and ongoing education process that discourages students from pursuing the field. In contrast to the high number of software engineering students, the relatively low number of RF engineering students is just one reason the industry is not keeping pace with demand. On the job, RF engineering has become so complex that RF engineers alone can no longer design end-to-end networks and devices. Instead, projects now require a team of many specialists who also have system-level perspective and understanding. As RF systems and applications become more and more complex, many companies struggle to identify the needed areas of expertise—and finding applicants qualified in niche areas of expertise only adds to the challenge. Barriers to RF Engineering Chapter One '' I would say that dynamic range is becoming an increasingly important specialization for multiband receivers and wireless systems. At mmWave frequencies with constrained link -budgets, every decibel counts, and more effort is required to increase antenna/chip integration for example." Jay Kruse Head of Hardware, eero

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