Basic skills and knowledge of communication equipment hardware engineers-1

To what extent is the technical requirement for hardware engineers?

Of course, from our childhood education, we know that we need to thoroughly understand the knowledge, the deeper the better. For any knowledge point, through the basic formula, the advanced law and formula are verified by mathematical tools. I think the physics of the College Entrance Examination has reached the pole, and it is not difficult to learn about physics in high school. However, for the purpose of selection, we have combined various laws of physics and combined them with a series of brain turns, complex operations make physics the most difficult subject for the college entrance examination.

If we solve hardware problems with the spirit of solving the physical difficulties of the college entrance examination, of course, the spirit is commendable, and it is worth encouraging this learning and exploration spirit after work; but it is not very good for project development, after all, hardware engineers work on Engineering Development and complete hardware projects within the specified time and budget, instead of the formulas and calculation results you have derived at this time, that is the work of scientists, that is the work of research.

An important feature of engineering development is "stepping on the footprints of our predecessors". Through engineering practices over the past decade or so, we have gained a lot of experience data and experience in various situations, for example, for PCB layout, almost every company has its own design guidelines/check list, which is summarized by the company in many projects in the past, each line can be said to have paid a "blood" price, which is for the board-level design; for core chips and devices, it is even more so, A chip or device company that has been made up by hundreds of thousands of people for several years can be fully understood through a hundred pages of datasheet.

In most cases, it is sufficient to know the main interfaces, parameters, functions, and performance, especially design guidelines or application notes provided by chip/device companies, it is generally the story of chip/device engineers. Generally, engineers who do not have 10 or 20 years of work experience cannot write these things.

Although it looks very simple, it looks like nonsense, but the detailed analysis, combined with the circuit theorem and electromagnetic law, a slight analysis, will find that it is almost a word. After graduation, students (who are good at learning, who prefer hard work, strong learning ability, and desire for knowledge) will find that there are too many knowledge points and technical points involved in hardware design, if you want to understand this knowledge point thoroughly, you need to understand it thoroughly. You will find that 24 hours a day is not enough, but I'm sorry, the Company invites you to come here not to let you learn, I want to design the hardware. I will see the schematic diagram in a month. Here you are holding the orcad manual, a command, and a command to learn orcad skills. Why do you need serial resistance, check whether the capacitance is 0.1uf or 0.01uf ....

It is a good thing to have a desire for knowledge, but it is a good thing to learn from the predecessors in addition to work, and to use various design guidelines as soon as possible to complete the design work and record their own knowledge shortcomings, it is the right way to work to learn and understand knowledge points through design verification/testing in your spare time.

I was delighted to find that the transmission line theory was too important when I graduated. I spent a month working hard on the transmission line theory and derived a large number of formulas for verification, in fact, in summary, there are a few words: impedance matching. If the receiver's impedance is greater than the sender's, what will happen to the signal; if the receiver's impedance is smaller than the receiver's impedance, what will happen to the signal; if the receiver's impedance is open, what will happen, what will happen? These articles will be introduced in every book about signal integrity, and there will be no complicated mathematical formula derivation. Just know, and then how to balance the impedance of the transmitter, serial resistance, PCB impedance, and matching impedance are all simple mathematical formulas.

Therefore, for those who have a strong desire for knowledge (such as me), sometimes they must learn to "just give it a try" and make full use of their experience to avoid technical mistakes. For example, they need not use formulas, you have to use the double integral to deduce it again. The main feature of hardware development is "extensive". You must know everything, and a good hardware engineer must understand everything, of course, it is better to go deep into some aspects to the principle level.

As the title of the blog says: You need to know about the various technologies, standards, chips, and devices of hardware design. You can trust them to provide functional performance, parameter features, and advantages and disadvantages when necessary.