RF & Microwave Engineering
A structured path through practical RF engineering. You start with why a wire stops behaving like a wire, build to reading and trusting S-parameters, and finish able to reason about a receiver front end as a system rather than a block diagram.
Pricing on registration
- Duration
- 8 weeks
- Modules
- 8
- Format
- Live + Recorded
- Certificate
- Yes
- Tools
- Keysight ADS, MATLAB, Python
You will hear before it is announced publicly
Outcomes
What you will be able to do
- Read a Smith chart without translating it back to algebra first
- Design and verify a matching network
- Interpret S-parameters, VSWR and return loss from real measurements
- Reason about noise figure and gain through a cascade
- Explain the architecture of an RF front end and the trade-offs in it
Prerequisites
What you need first
- Basic circuit analysis — Ohm's law, Kirchhoff, phasors
- Comfort with complex numbers
Software
What to install
- Keysight ADS (student or trial licence is enough)
- Python 3.11+ with NumPy and Matplotlib
Curriculum
8 modules
Expand a module to see the lessons inside it.
- Electrical length and why it decides everything
- Transmission lines from first principles
- Characteristic impedance
- Why 50 Ω, historically and practically
- The reflection coefficient
- VSWR and return loss, and how they relate
- Mismatch as a mirror
- Time-domain reflectometry as a debugging tool
- Where the chart comes from
- Impedance and admittance on one chart
- Single-stub matching
- L and Pi networks
- Why S and not Z or Y at RF
- Reading a two-port
- De-embedding and calibration
- What a VNA is really measuring
- Gain definitions
- Stability circles
- Noise figure
- Linearity and IP3
- Filter responses
- Lumped and distributed
- Insertion loss
- Practical layout effects
- Mixing and image
- Conversion loss
- Phase noise
- Oscillator topologies
- Cascade analysis
- Superheterodyne vs direct conversion
- Budgeting a receiver
- Design review
Projects
What you will build
- Design and simulate a matching network to a specified load
- Cascade budget for a receiver front end
- Characterise a filter from its S-parameters
FAQ
Common questions
No. Measurements are provided as data files, and everything else is simulated. If you do have lab access, the projects are written so you can run them on real hardware.
The worked examples use ADS, but the concepts transfer. Where a free alternative exists it is noted in the module.
Yes. Live sessions are recorded and available to enrolled participants afterwards.