How Can We Improve Our Communications Industry?

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How Can We Improve Our Communications Industry?

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• A very serious question facing us today.
• What kind of industries should our country have?

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• Certainly, we cannot afford to have those
  industries which are competitive because of their
  low costs due to mainland China.
• Labor, land and almost everything else are
  cheaper there.

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• The only industries which we can have are those
  which have very high technology threshold. So
  high that our major competitor, mainland China,
  can hardly compete with us.

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• At the end of the Chin Dynasty, some of our
  enlightened ancestors started to build factories,
  nearly all around Shanghai.
• There are two characteristics of them
• For internal use, never for exporting.
• All turn-key factories.

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• We remained essentially an agricultural country
  for a long time until 1970s.
• Suddenly, we started to export.
• The ability of exporting is a sign that we are
  now an industrialized country.

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• We could export for three reasons.
• 1.Although many factories were still turn-key
  factories, the technologies required to run these
  factories were much higher than before.

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• 2.The costs incurred were low as compared with
  many of our neighboring countries.
• 3.High quality of our products.

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• For example, we have had a quite successful PC
  industry for a long time because of the
  following
• 1.We could design and manufacture mother-boards
  well with low cost.
• 2.We could quickly design new chip sets after
  Intel announces a new CPU.
• 3.We have an IC manufacturing industry which
  produces the chip sets here with high quality.
• 4.The costs incurred were relatively low.

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• But, our PC industry now faces sharp competition
  from the PC industries in mainland China.

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• A mobile phone system diagram.

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• A wireless LAN system diagram.

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• Bad news
• As far as I know, for all mobile phones and
  wireless LAN cards made in Taiwan, all chips
  inside them are not made in Taiwan.
• We are at best a system house.

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• Why is it so difficult for us to design chips for
  mobile phone phones and wireless LAN cards while
  not so difficult for us to design PC chip sets?

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• Reason 1
• Communication technology itself is much more
  complicated than computer technology.
• The history of communication technology is much
  longer than that of computer technology.

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• Reason 2
• Unfortunately, because of national security
  reasons, our government had forbidden us to fool
  around with communications systems for a long
  time.
• We therefore started much later than those
  developed countries, such as US, France and Japan.

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• Reason 3
• In communication systems, analog circuits have to
  be designed for both baseband and RF band.
• Yet, analog circuit design has been neglected for
  a long time in our country.

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• Reason 4
• Digital circuit design can be verified by
  simulation and it is much harder to do the same
  thing to analog circuit design.
• The design of analog circuits is almost like an
  art.
• It needs much more experience.

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• Reason 5
• Communication systems often involve high
  frequencies.
• In such circumstances, the mastering of
  electromagnetic theory is very important.
• Again, unfortunately, electromagnetic theory has
  been neglected by us for long time.
• A few students understand EM theory thoroughly.

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• Reason 6
• The experts in VLSI design are often not experts
  in communications and vice versa.
• Many communication chip design companies know
  semi-conductor technology very well. This is
  usually why their chips are so competitive (low
  cost, low power and high speed).

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• Reason 7
• In baseband, software knowledge can hardly be
  ignored.
• In other words, electrical engineers have to be
  familiar with imbedded systems.
• But most electrical engineers are soft on
  software.

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• Reason 8
• We cannot hire computer engineers to do the work
  because most of them, except my students, know
  nothing about communication.

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• For instance, they dont know why bits can be
  mixed.
• They therefore have a hard time to understand
  QPSK, CDMA and OFDM etc.
• They have no idea about transmission line.

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• How to solve the problem?
• My major suggestion is to forget about the fancy
  topics and let us start a campaign to produce
  good engineers who can design chips for the
  communication industry.

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• But good engineers are not produced by having up
  in the air lectures, seminars and conferences.
• Good engineers are produced by hands-on
  experience and hard work.
• I suggest that we start from the university
  education.

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• Make sure that electrical engineering
• students know more about software and the
• concept of algorithms.
• 2. Make sure that more computer science
• students understand electrical engineering.
• 3. If possible, merge these two departments to
• make a much stronger department.
• 4. Make more communication major electrical
• engineering students be able to design chips.

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5. Make sure that there are a larger group of
electrical engineering students who know
EM theory quite well. I dont like the
situation that antenna is only taught in
graduate schools. Note that there are very
fancy antennas for mobile phone base
stations. Our country can never become a
leading communication country if we are
behind in antenna design.
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6. For all electrical engineering students,
emphasize circuit design., especially analog
circuit design. 7. Encourage high school
students to be interested in audio and video
systems. Establish clubs for youngsters to
be familiar with power amplifiers and so
on very early.
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8. Establish a web-site to exhibit circuits,
especially analog circuits, so that students
would not be scared by circuit design. (Is
it true that those students who are well
versed are those who read many books? I
therefore believe that students who are
exposed to circuit design often will be good in
circuit design.) 9. Hold seminars for students
and professors to exchange experiences in
designing circuits.
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Our goal To produce engineers who can build low
cost, high speed and low power chips for our
communications industry. This goal will never be
achieved if we only talk about fancy ideas. This
goal will be achieved if we go back to basics.
That is, if our students have basic knowledge
about circuit design, especially analog circuit
design, there is no reason that we cannot compete
with other advanced countries.
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Thank you.