How to Learn RF Engineering Well

I am an undergraduate student and now do an antenna design as my final year project. But, when I tried simulation of my design, I always found that I spent a lot of time but got almost nothing and what I learned from University was not enough. I really want to be a RF engineer in the future. What should I do? Enhance my Mathematics and understanding on EM theory? (But someone told me dont spend too much time on understanding everything) Do more experiment or internship to get experience?

Please give me more specific suggestions. Thank you.

Starting antenna design is not a good starting point to learn RF Engineering.it's a very particular case of RF area..
In fact, the theory and the practice are normally consistant between them but some unpredictable effects diverge this harmony.
I suggest you to select well known textbooks of famous authors such as Gonzales,Raab,Grebennikov,etc. then start to study the RF circuits over these books by aid of a simulator ( ADS, Microwave Office etc).You will gain experiences by time.
If you implement your circuits and systems and if you measure to see the discrepencies between simulation and measurments that'll be perfect study..

Zener Chang said:

I am an undergraduate student and now do an antenna design as my final year project. But, when I tried simulation of my design, I always found that I spent a lot of time but got almost nothing and what I learned from University was not enough. I really want to be a RF engineer in the future. What should I do? Enhance my Mathematics and understanding on EM theory? (But someone told me dont spend too much time on understanding everything) Do more experiment or internship to get experience?

Please give me more specific suggestions. Thank you.

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My advice is what I did myself to become a RF expert. Learn anything you can and never stop learning. Find a radio amateur or a club where you can learn by hands-on work. Find an internship at a company designing antennas if possible.
For a good start, find the ARRL Antenna Book and ARRL Radio Amateurs' Handbook. If you have a good knowledge of math, find JDKraus :Antennas.
Make RF engineering your hobby, try to build equipment and antennas.
Electromagnetism and antennas are difficult fields, but worth of effort to get into.
Good luck!

Zener Chang said:

(But someone told me dont spend too much time on understanding everything) Do more experiment or internship to get experience?

Click to expand...

Understanding is important in RF, because many circuit designs can only be understood if you understand some basics (theory). Once you understand the basics, I would switch to application and see how to apply theory. You can learn a lot from experienced RF designers, so an internship can be a great opportunity to understand how theory and design go hand in hand. Experimenting on your own might be frustrating if you have nobody to guide you.

there are MANY types of RF engineers, so first you need to figure out what type you want to be. I wanted to become a microwave/rf designer, so I tried to design things! nowadays, with powerful laptop computers and the ability to analyze your designs with very good software....you can go a long way to learn to design.

It also helps, of course, if you go out into industry, seek a job where you have to design things, and hopefully you get teamed up with an experienced design mentor that you can ask questions off. For this to work, you need to join a larger firm where there are more than one rf design engineers there! If you join a startup with only software and mechanical engineers to talk with...you will basically have to figure out EVERYTHING on your own. Since microwaves, at first, are counter-intuitive...that may be a painful first job.

But starting off, just on analysis software, design things like:
100 MHz lowpass filter with nine poles and lumped (SMT chip) components
3 GHz lowpass filter with transmission line topology (High/low impedance lines)
design a parallel coupled line bandpass filter at 1o GHz on duroid substrate
design a 1 GHz 12 dB gain FET amplifier with at least 200 MHz bandwidth using discrete fet.
etc etc

You can use programs like Qucs to analyze the circuits, and h free version of Sonnet to analyze the transmission line structures, like the bandpass filter.

My advice is to watch the videos of popular universities in Analog and RF, example :
https://freevideolectures.com/Course/2927/Advanced-Analog-Integrated-Circuits-Spring-2011