Best Grad Schools in U.S. for RF/Microwave ?

Hello all,

Which universities would be the best in U.S. to work for a PhD in RF/Microwave area?

I think this question has been asked several times. Well, here is my opinion:

East Coast: Georgia Tech (heard they are good) and MIT (maybe)

Mid-West: UIUC (best for numerical methods) and University of Michigan (heard they are good)

West Coast: UCLA (left-handed metamaterials)

Ohio Tech have spme very well-known researchers. :)

BR,
Dave

I think UC Berkeley and Stanford University is also very good. and UC San Diego is very excellent in RF Power Amplifier Design.

What factors have you guys considered in judging these schools?

Just looking at teachers, Razavi is at UCLA (isn't he?)

Univ Colorado Boulder is good too, with Professor Zoya Popovic. Power Amplifiers, antennas, MEMS.

What about UPenn? Anyone have an opinion about that?

UPenn - Mittra is there, he is well known for numerical methods in electromagnetics

UCLA - Itoh is there

Actually U Penn is in Philadelphia, Prof. Mittra is not there. (I got my masters there. As far as I know they have no microwave courses.) Mittra is at Penn State (as I recall), in State College, PA. Syracuse Univeristy, very near me, has a nice hands-on sequence of courses for microwave design. (That is where I got my Ph. D.) One of our employees is presently going through that sequence for his masters. The quality of the courses is very good.

Can you please paste the link as I couldn't find any such discussion.

Many Thanks.

UMass-Amherst - Circuit Level, Practical, MMIC

Cornell - Circuit Level, RFIC/MMIC Group, Theoretical, Practical

UC-Santa Barbara - Theoretical, MMIC, Devices

University of South Florida - Practical, MMIC, MMIC Test, PAs, RFIC

University of Florida - MMIC (Silicon), RFIC, Practical

Virginia Tech - RFIC - Practical

Michigan - MMIC - Very Theoretical

Georgia Tech - Analog Mixed Signal, RFIC, MMIC - Practical and Theoretical -- Largest RFIC Group in USA

UC Berkeley - RFIC, Analog Mixed Signal - Theoretical but Practical

Stanford - RFIC, Analog Mixed Signal - All Theoretical

UC San Diego - RFIC Group, Device Physics, MMIC, Both Theoretical, Practical

Kansas State - RFIC Group, Practical

MIT - RFIC, MMIC, Device Physics, Circuit Level - Very, Very Theoretical

University of Illinois - Urbana - MMIC, RFIC, Device Physics - Theoretical - Physics

So by going with experts UCLA would be the no.1 choice with Razavi, Itoh and Abidi being there... ?

depends what kind of microwave you want ? do you want IC Design or Microwave MIC design -- board level design and discrete transistors ?

It depends on which one. If so UCLA is good but razavi only does cmos. other schools do sige bipolar if that matters to you.

If you are looking for PhD funding and research opportunities, North Carolina State University (NCSU) is also a good choice. So far as I know, Prof Micheal Steer has received more than 19 millions in government grant as a principal investigator to do RF research. The latest project from last year has received more than 5 millions for a ~ 5 year project.

Of course, if you believe you are good enough to go for those Ivy League or top national universities, forget about NCSU.

Do you go to NCSU -- is it good ?

If you want to gain a broad experience in RF harwdare design, signal processing, and field experiments then look at KU for radar. They recently received a S19M grant. Tution is cheap, in-state if you are a research assistant or free if you are a teaching assistant (at least when I was there).


http://www.oread.ku.edu/Oread05/Apr22/nsf.html

http://www.rsl.ku.edu/graduate.html

Penn has one Professor - Nader Engheta who does some great work in left handed materials, but his work is mostly theoretical research....as in no big labs for hands on experience.

UCLA does also a great job in antenna design, group of Yahya Rahmat-Samii

stanford and UCLA

UCLA is best school for RF