This is the entire prompt I gave it, copied as I sent it:

Design a high-gain PCB Yagi antenna within a 10 cm x 15 cm area using the automaticphysics antenna-agent. Use JLCPCB's FR-4 TG135 material. Prefer a 2-layer board over a 4-layer board, and prioritize a 1.6 mm board thickness over other options. Maximize the antenna gain while maintaining sufficient bandwidth for 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi. The input impedance should be 50 Ohm. Ideally, the antenna should achieve higher gain than the TI DN034. Use the TI antenna as the baseline. If cutting holes in the PCB could improve antenna efficiency, use only circular holes to maintain mechanical rigidity. Generate a KiCad footprint for the antenna. Have fun!

TI's DN034 measures about 7.2 dBi on the same 100 x 150 mm area, using layers from a 4-layer stack. So the challenge was to beat it on a cheap 2-layer board.

What it did

It read the TI app note, kept TI's basic concept, and moved it onto 2 layers. Then it wrote a parametric KiCad generator, hooked it up to antenna-agent, an FDTD solver plugin for KiCad, and ran an evolution-strategy optimizer with 8 solves going in parallel, which kept my CPU fans screaming for about 5 hours. I said "Have fun!" and apparently it did. My CPU did not.

The highlights

1. First guess: 8.7 dBi. Not bad, but it found that 26% of the power was just heating the FR-4.
2. "What if we remove the FR-4?" It drilled 182 round holes in the board and got +0.4 dB. FR-4 makes a fine PCB and a poor antenna substrate.
3. The backfire cliff. At one point a quarter of the candidates collapsed to about 4 dBi. Before believing it, the AI checked two mesh artifacts and ruled both out. The real cause: when a director gets slightly too long, it starts acting as a reflector, and the beam flips around and points back over the feed. Peak gain sits right next to that cliff. The fix was to also score every candidate at a "guard" frequency above the band, so the optimizer couldn't go right up to the edge.
4. "What if two?" It put two Yagis side by side, fed in phase, with a shared ground plane as the reflector: +0.7 dB.

Final numbers (simulated, so take them with a grain of salt)

That works out to about +2.2 to 2.5 dB over TI on paper. It also checked relative permittivity between 4.2 and 4.8, and the worst corner still gives 9.0 dBi realized gain with no backfire.

Hi, I’ve finished my first RF power amplifier (PA). The amplifier is designed for narrowband operation at 805 MHz with a 100 W output. I used the BLP981 transistor and performed the design and simulation using Microwave Office. The next step is to have the board manufactured using Rogers 4350 material with Sierra Circuits. Once fabricated, I’ll attach a copper heat spreader and a heatsink to test it. I hope it works, as this is senior design project

I’d like to get some feedback from the community!

I’ve attached the schematic, but it’s large and the numbers aren't clearly visible; if you’d like to know any details, feel free to send me a message.

Hey! I love antennas, and want to pursue a Masters in the US to learn more on RF and antennas. I’m from the US. The problem is that, I used to be a horrible student and did not care about my courses. I failed Electromagnetics 1 a year ago inconveniently (I didn’t go to the final exam..)

I ended up finally locking in and did great in antennas, RFIC, circuits. After that I even did an antennas internship. Now I have a year left to graduate with a GPA of 3.0, a willingness to learn and get a Masters.

I’m retaking Electromagnetics right now but Masters applications are also happening now, and universities will see that I’ve failed it.

Any advice? Should I give up on a Masters? Is it possible to get in at a school that’s decent at antennas?

Hi everyone, I have designed a layout for a 20W power amp. Now I am interested in performing PCB based thermal simulation, knowing the dissipated power from transistor which I calculated based on the efficiency.

I am using a simple two layer substrate and have used copper filled vias under the transistor to transfer maximum heat on the bottom side of the PCB, towards the heat sink block.

I am performing the following steps for thermal simulation:

1: Took a PCB layout.

2: From susbtrate, defined a heat source layer right on top of cond (top copper) layer.

3: Generated technology files from substrate editor.

4: In the layout, removed rest of the layers which were not defined in the substrate (pcb stackup).

5: Defined thermal floorplane by selwcting appropriate generated .tcl file and defining boundary conditions for the heat source layer.

6: Added heat source of the same size as of transistor on the top of cond layer.

7: Run the simulation.

Now the simulation is working and displaying some results as well if my design is small. Even though the heat source size is same. But when I change this dummy small layout with my actual layout, keeping the heat source size same, it provides me an error saying layout.gda file not found. Cannot show thermal results.

Altering the layout fixes the problem. I also tried changing the mesh, and solver from 0(default) to 1. But didn't help.

I am using exactly same layers which I defined in the substrate. Even if my small layout is working, and if I add a small piece of top or bottom copper, same error appears again. Could anyone suggest me what is this issue?

I am working on a project and am looking for any engineers who have had to deal with thermal analysis on high frequency signal circuitry. I am designing an enclosure for a circuit that deals with signals in the GHz range. If anyone has any suggestions or has worked with anything similar let me know. The power is relatively low at 1 W and I am confused if I should focus more on insulating the casing so it doesn't change temperatures with the ambient temperature (it will be operating at room temp) or if I should be focusing on using heat sinks to allow any heat from the circuit to leave?

Keeping it short and sweet, as I was shown round a surface mount technology assembly line, the guy asked me before stepping forward if I have a pace maker. I said no, he quickly explained one of their colleagues finds it interferes with him being near the line because of the magnetic fields. But what would it do to me as an operator for 40 hours a week? What effect would it be having on me?

I get that this sounds like a tin foil hat question but im genuinely curious. Many thanks