RFIC’s with Dr. Lee
I’m taking a radio-frequency integrated circuits class with Dr. Thomas Lee this quarter, and so far it looks like I’ll have some fun while learning a lot. Dr. Lee has a lecture style that I’ve not often seen. For example, to provide context for certain radio detection hierarchies:
“The Tuned RF receiver was the first to be invented in at the turn of the century, but they knew it was suboptimal. After the antenna, they used a multiple bandpass filters and gain blocks. Geeks loved this, because each of those components had a knob you could use to tune the blocks. And geeks love knobs. The alpha-nerds could show they are better than the beta-nerds because they could adjust the knobs better. But ordinary people don’t like knobs. They want the radio to telepathically know what they want, and adjust accordingly. Now, as there are more ordinary people than geeks, the Tuned RF receiver faded into the history.”
Yeah, it’s great.