Articles by Microwave Journal

Among the many characteristics one must possess to be a successful engineer—intelligence, creativity, resourcefulness—one common trait stands out among the rest: passion. I am talking about the engineers that love talking about their work with anyone who will listen. These are the people that I want to work with (and hire) because they take their work home with them.

It appears we are in the dawn of a New Microwave Era. As Sherry Hess wrote about last year during the dark days of the Recession, the down economy will ultimately cause Creative Destruction for our industry. I am impressed how this creation-by-necessity has lead to some very innovative thinking.

I’m the first person to admit that mixers are confusing. Even drawing a mixer schematic can be challenging—what with all the crossing over of lines and the 4 and sometimes 8 diodes configurations. For better or worse, the complexity of mixers means (a) most companies don’t want to design mixers, and (b) Marki Microwave’s customers sometimes need a lot of coaching and advice. To put things in perspective, there are literally hundreds of texts relating to RF and microwave amplifier design, and about 3 relating to mixer design. It is not your fault you are confused!

In my experience, practical engineering knowledge cannot be found in a textbook. Truth is, textbook understanding is antiquated. Technology inevitably moves too fast to be accurately captured in a textbook snapshot. In fact, most of the course-work covered in universities is at least 5 years old (more like 20) and renders any newly minted college graduate effectively useless in the real engineering trenches. In an effort to help my fellow engineers gain some practical knowledge...

Welcome to Microwave Journal’s newest guest blog: “Generation Pi”. Following the wonderful feedback Marki Microwave received after our Expert Advice column in December, I am happy to announce that I will be blogging here over the next few months now that Sherry Hess’ tenure is finished. For those of you who enjoyed reading her blog as much as I have, you can check out her latest entries on the AWR website.

December is the time for lists in my house. Dear Santa lists and New Year Resolution lists. So perhaps I’ve been preconditioned to take note of others producing lists as well? This one caught my eye with its headline: “Engineers spend 60-80% of work time changing designs.” Really?

I like to watch CBS’s Sunday Morning show on "you guessed it” Sunday mornings. Recently they did a piece on “Once Objects of Scorn, Nerds Now Rule.” And it got me smiling! It’s not that being a nerd has become trendy per se but that with the new culture of wireless gadgets and the Internet, you have to be nerd-minded in order to communicate, be connected, survive in the 21st century. So, voila. Nerd has become the new normal! I like this a lot.

Thanks to a coworker, who convinced me that it would be a good thing to do (for the greater good), I've signed up for the IMS Steering Committee for Anaheim 2010. I'm not one to be quiet (oh gosh..why have I not learned)—so now I find myself attending meetings on my birthday, on Saturdays, etc.

If you’ve been reading the MWJ website these past few weeks, you’ve no doubt noticed a lot of information on “behavioral modeling” coming into the public domain. Just this past month, the MWJ website hosted interviews with NMDG’s Marc Vanden Bosch on S-functions and David Root of Agilent on X-parameters.

Dane Collins, AWR’s CEO, recently sent me a link to a very interesting and timely article in the Harvard Business Journal entitled, " Why small companies will win in this economy.” Author Peter Bergman points out that in this economy, the gap of confidence between small companies and big ones is growing, and that it seems counter intuitive that smaller companies are winning big deals and gaining market share in a recession when the big guys seem unable to weather the storm. One reason he gives is that, while customers used to rely on the security big companies provided, the collapse of AIG, Lehman, Citibank, GM, Chrysler, etc. has resulted in the belief that it is risky to do business with big companies and the trust isn’t there anymore.