Roles and Responsibilities of a Wireless Engineer

Wireless engineers are electrical engineers that specialize in the development, manufacturing, and testing of wireless technologies, such as cell phones, satellite systems that support systems, and wireless networks.

Wireless engineers are responsible for creating, supporting, developing, and publishing wireless communication networks. But to know the work module of wireless engineers we should have little knowledge regarding wireless engineering.

Wireless Engineering

Wireless engineering is the branch of engineering, that deals with design, application & research regarding wireless communication such as radiofrequency, radar, etc.

Wireless technology has provided connectivity and communication for over a century, providing consumers with previously unknown flexibility and mobility. In these years, the position of wireless technology has increased significantly, and to serve a mobile society, the wireless networks will have to grow many times over in the years coming. Wireless communication technology depends upon principles. These include:

• Radio Engineering: A wireless system cannot perform its function, without an antenna. From the wireless system’s view, the major use of the antenna is to send an information-carrying signal from the transmitter to the receiver. It converts a guided wave from a waveguide or transmission line into a propagating electromagnetic wave in free space. Radio systems are used to transfer information from a source to a remote destination.
• Wireless link design: Wireless access technologies allow connectivity and communication over wireless links.
• The wireless Infrastructure: The wireless network work using radio frequency technology, a frequency associated with radio wave propagation within the electromagnetic spectrum. The core of a wireless network is an access point. The access point primary role is to broadcast a wireless signal which is received and send by computers. Access points often act as a gateway to a wired network’s resources, such as an Internet connection. There are mainly three types of wireless networks, which are WLAN, WWAN, WMAN.

Wireless Engineer:

Wireless engineering includes installation, configuration, and maintaining wireless equipment, network management, and security standards. Wireless network engineers, need to assess, plan, and develop several operations capabilities for wireless telecommunications.

Roles and Responsibility of Wireless Engineer:

• Design & build custom applications.
• Establish and optimize wireless networks.
• Develop wireless network infrastructure and make recommendations on system enhancements for optimization.
• Provide technical assessment of requirements.
• Design & validate radio frequency link performance, quality, and reliability.
• Develop software for wireless technology.
• Include propagation theory, cellular theory, radio frequency engineering tools, and antenna theory to choose tower antenna placement.
• Recommend site upgrade such as down tilling of antenna and reorientation of radio addition.

Skills and Qualification of Wireless Engineer:

Most employees would look for wireless engineers who have gone through wireless network engineer training to earn a bachelor’s degree in computer science or multiple years of additional experience. Network engineers also come from areas such as engineering, mathematics, and physics.

Since it is a skill set that requires experience, a minimum experience of five years in WAN/LAN engineering is mandatory for an aspirant. The engineer should become adept with wireless technologies, such as Wi-Fi, Wi-Max, and WAP. They should be able to understand a scripting language such as Bash, Perl, or Python.

They should also have a certification in Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP), Wireless or Certified Wireless Network Professional (CWNP), or Aruba Certified Mobility Associate (ACMA).

Wireless Engineer Career Prospects:

Wireless engineers have a different opportunity within the networking field. For example, networking analysts specialize in the installation and maintenance of networks and often cross over between the technical and business sides of an organization.

There are different job roles listed that are suitable for someone with wireless engineer skills:

• Hardware RF engineer
• Electronics and Telecommunication engineer
• Graduate Telecom engineer
• Radio Frequency engineer
• Telecommunication engineer
• Junior engineer( signal & telecom)
• Radiofrequency engineer- small cell design.

The wireless skills are on a demanding rise for IT projects, and according to a 2009 Cisco survey, 65 percent of IT managers expected to add dedicated wireless networking job roles in the coming years. Therefore, there are a variety of reasons why wireless network engineers are in demand. Also, the push towards wireless offices and the growth of mobile application development, require listing mobile apps in a wireless environment.