How long is it normal to be looking for a microwave antenna job?

I’m not the best one to give career advice but I would say spend as little time as possible waiting. After you’ve applied to the positions you should look to get busy on personal projects even if they are not paying the bills.

But what are the things you can do at this stage? Let's start from simple things and then branch out a bit

If you’re good at antennas the easiest thing that you can probably do at this stage is to study the antennas built by other companies and do a technical review for them. What category does the antenna fit in (directional, omnidirectional, portable, outdoor etc etc)? How easy is the system to set up? What is its efficiency (input power vs range/number of devices)? In what cases can it be used? ETC. Once you tune yourself you’ll discover new parameters of evaluation. This exercise will give you an understanding of the antenna market (their price, target customer etc) as well as increase your practical knowledge of different kinds of antennas in use. Besides, it will help you market yourself. It is certainly going to be much more interesting than a resume and may even lead to opportunities in the future such as paid training assignments.

Start building antennas. Many of the microwave antennas especially for systems like wifi are really really cheap. They have widely available chips to help drive the input current so you can have an experimental setup and create some designs yourself. This can set you up for better things like building 4G ,5G and 6G antennas (which also have chips available for the input current source). If you keep at it you’ll be able to design a complete Base Station in your lab. Although to do this you’ll have to learn more about complementary systems like routers (which you will because it’s not that hard)

Work towards understanding the antenna ecosystem. It's not just about a device that you design in a lab but how it works in the public environment that counts. How do you acquire land to install your antennas on? How do you find line of sight in complex urban environments? How do you ensure 24/7 power for your antenna? How do you keep your base station cool? Although these are not part of your core job these are a very important part of the ecosystem and have entire businesses built on just providing these support functions. Learning them will broaden your scope.

Eventually you’ll find out that many of the big companies aren’t doing anything special that you can’t do by yourself. Maybe not on as big a scale as them but then you also don’t need billions of dollars in revenue to sustain yourself. And perhaps not getting a call from their HR department was the best thing that could have happened. Make it count.

Akshat Jiwan Sharma

Strategy Consultant--Innovation/ Materials science/International relations/Telecommunications/Digital Transformation/Partnerships Mobile/whatsapp:+919654119771 email:getellobed@gmail.com

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Notes by Akshat Jiwan Sharma

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