Looking Back, Racing Forward: How 2025's RF Milestones Propel The Breakthroughs Of 2026

By John Oncea, Editor

RF tech in 2025 spanned spy cats, moon GPS, and invisibly powerful weapons. In 2026, RF engineering breaks limits—uniting AI, 6G, D-band, and terahertz innovation.

For a couple of years now, we’ve been taking a look back at the articles you, dear readers, clicked on the most. For instance, in 2023, you were into the edge, SDR, mysterious signals from space, and jamming. Last year, it was all about Wi-Fi 7, the death of analog TV, oscillators in space, and counter drone warfare.

So, what resonated the most in 2025? Let’s take a quarter-by-quarter look and, when we’re done, we’ll take our best guess at what 2026 will bring.

Kicking The Year Off Right

The top two stories of the first quarter were also the top two stories of the year: one focused on neutralizing drone swarms with radio waves, the other dug into satellite orbits. While the technology behind neutralizing drones is fascinating, the reason the British government created it – to provide wounded soldiers the care needed within the “golden hour – is what drew me to the story.

As far as the second story goes, well, who doesn’t like a look at the diversity of Earth orbits, allowing humanity to address a wide range of challenges and opportunities, from global communication and navigation to scientific discovery?

The third most-read story was one of my favorites to write: a trip back to the 1960s, when the CIA decided it would be a good idea to spend $20 million to turn a cat into a radio transmitter to spy on a Soviet embassy. It went about as well as one would have expected.

Moon GPS, Career Choices, And A Horrible Train Accident

The most-read story of the second quarter was this look at the first-ever reception and tracking of GPS signals on the moon, a technological leap that future exploration missions, including NASA’s Artemis missions, could use to help determine position, velocity, and time accurately and autonomously.

Many of you showed a great deal of interest in advancing your career, linking to this story, sussing out if Python or MATLAB – both powerful tools for numerical computation and data analysis – was a better choice. Long story short: both or valuable, but the better choice depends on your career goals and the industry you’re targeting. Or why not choose both?

Finally, our third most popular story was about parasitic oscillations. More specifically, we looked at the role these unwanted electronic oscillations played in the worst-ever accident in the more than 30-year operating history of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.

More Spying, Inside The Transistor, And Good Ol’ Antennas

You certainly seem to like your spy stories. In addition to the Acoustikitty story from the first quarter, you really like this story about how the inventor of the theremin helped spark a Cold War spy race by creating The Thing. “What thing,” you’re asking. Well, read the article, but if you want a hint, it was concealed inside a wooden carving of the Great Seal of the United States and hung in the U.S. ambassador’s official residence in Moscow for seven years.

Stories two and three weren’t nearly as captivating, but their popularity reveals that you are all engineers at heart. The two stories in question are this history of the transistor and this one about antennas. Again, neither story would leave you wondering if there was a listening device in your wall art, but both did contain a surprise or two.

All Good Things Must Come To An End

The year comes to an end with this story about how high-power microwave technologies are reshaping the defense landscape. No longer speculative science, their future impact depends not on raw power, but on judicious integration into doctrine, careful engineering of discrimination and safety controls, and sustained research in counter-countermeasures.

Far from the world of defense, story number two dives into pain treatment. Specifically, the comprehensive use of RF technologies has become a key method in modern pain management protocols for various chronic pain syndromes due to their efficacy, safety, and minimally invasive nature.

Finally, we wrap up our year in review with the fourth quarter’s most popular story, a look at the $22B Skyworks–Qorvo deal and what it means to the industry.

2026: The Year RF Engineering Goes Beyond The Horizon

With our look back on 2025 done, let’s shift gears and see what we should be on the lookout for in 2026.*

By early 2026, the boundaries separating microwave, millimeter-wave, and terahertz technologies had blurred almost completely. The RF landscape is advancing at a rate not seen in decades, driven by simultaneous breakthroughs in materials, integration, computation, and system intelligence. What once belonged to distinct academic fields—semiconductor physics, electromagnetics, thermal engineering, and artificial intelligence—is now part of a cohesive ecosystem that engineers must navigate holistically to shape the next generation of wireless and sensing systems.

* Two top 10 stories from the first quarter weren’t included, but I wanted to give them their fair due. The first, this spy satellite story (shocking, I know), and the second, this look at antenna calibration.

Pushing Into The D-Band And Beyond

Research organizations worldwide are targeting operation in the sub-THz and D-band range (110–170 GHz), enabling ultra-high-capacity links and sub-millimeter radar resolution. A May 2025 study posted to arXiv demonstrated CMOS-compatible amplifier chains capable of stable operation beyond 150 GHz, highlighting how mainstream silicon processes can now compete with III–V materials at frequencies once dominated by InP and GaAs. These findings point to a near-term future where 6G base stations and short-range industrial backhaul links routinely operate in these high-frequency bands.

Laboratory demonstrations in 2025 achieved full-duplex D-band links with notable reductions in phase noise and receiver noise, a leap toward real-time, high-throughput bidirectional communication at terabit speeds, according to Nasdaq. As spectrum scarcity intensifies below 100 GHz, advancing electromagnetic design and packaging technologies into these regions has become essential. High-frequency operation not only boosts bandwidth but also enhances spatial resolution for imaging and radar sensing, an advantage for automotive safety systems and industrial robotics.

AI And Machine Learning At The Core Of RF

Artificial intelligence is no longer a futuristic tool in RF – it’s embedded across the design and deployment continuum. Supported by initiatives such as Natcast’s AIDRFIC program under the U.S. National Semiconductor Technology Center, AI-assisted design workflows are drastically reducing time-to-market for complex RFIC architectures. Neural networks are being trained to predict parasitic effects during circuit layout, while reinforcement learning optimizes biasing and matching networks across temperature and frequency variation.

In operational systems, adaptive beamforming, anomaly detection, and interference cancellation are now being handled by ML algorithms embedded in the RF front-end itself. The transition to software-adaptive radios means designers must treat signal environments as dynamic learning problems rather than static specifications.

The New Architecture Of Antennas

Antenna innovation continues as one of the defining characteristics of modern RF systems. In 2026, the march toward massive MIMO and dynamic beam steering shows no sign of slowing. Arrays with hundreds of elements are becoming practical, not only for network infrastructure but also for satellites, autonomous vehicles, and wearable sensors. Enhanced integration of beamforming networks with RFICs allows beams to be generated and reconfigured on the fly with energy efficiency previously deemed impossible.

The industry shift toward Antenna-in-Package (AiP) design, embedding radiating structures directly with transceivers, is also accelerating. According to Knowledge Sourcing Intelligence, this approach reduces loss while enabling miniaturized, reconfigurable modules suitable for wearables, drones, and AR/VR devices. The clear trajectory is toward complete antenna – RF front-end co-design, where electromagnetic simulation, circuit analysis, and thermal management merge into a single optimization problem.

From GaN To Ultra-Wide Bandgap Materials

Traditional materials like GaN on SiC continue to dominate high-power and wideband amplifiers, especially in defense, radar, and telecommunication base stations. But behind the scenes, 2026 is poised to become the decade of ultra-wide bandgap (UWBG) exploration. SiGe and advanced CMOS scaling are improving linearity and noise figures, while new materials with larger band gaps – some exceeding 4 eV—promise significant advances in breakdown voltage and thermal resilience. Semiconductor research programs across Asia and Europe are seeking to combine the speed of III–V semiconductors with the manufacturability of silicon, preparing for an era of high-voltage, energy-efficient communications-on-chip.

Heterogeneous And 3D Integration

Miniaturization has evolved into multidimensional integration. The boundaries between chip, package, and substrate are fading as heterogeneous integration strategies take center stage. Combining GaN, SiGe, CMOS, and even photonic components in a single module shortens interconnect paths and reduces parasitic losses while improving bandwidth and thermal performance. Organizations focused on next-generation test and measurement have already demonstrated compact D-band transceivers built from stacked 3D modules.

This packaging evolution demands better co-simulation across electromagnetic, thermal, and mechanical domains. Such capability ensures that the performance predicted in simulation aligns closely with on-wafer and over-the-air measurements, an increasingly difficult challenge as designs climb into the terahertz domain.

Expanding Role Of mmWave And The 6G Frontier

With 5G ecosystems maturing, mmWave technology has spread from telecom infrastructure into industrial automation, edge computing, and IoT deployments. The next phase – 6G experimentation – will rely heavily on compact, power-efficient mmWave transceivers that merge communication and sensing into one integrated platform, according to Newstrail. Emerging concepts such as holographic MIMO and real-time channel-aware wavefront control will further drive demand for high-precision phase and amplitude control at the hardware level.

Radar And Sensing Lead Automotive And UAV Advances

As autonomous systems mature, radar sensing moves toward sub-degree angular resolution and higher operating bands around 77–81 GHz and beyond. Compact, radar-on-chip modules are rapidly replacing discrete architectures, blending signal processing and power management into a single die footprint, according to WhaTech. These technology paths parallel those of aerial robotics and UAV navigation, where multi-band radar concurrently assists in obstacle avoidance and environmental mapping.

Tools, Testing, And Thermal Mastery

The new generation of RF engineering depends as much on precise measurement as on clever design. As systems rise in frequency and integration density, phase noise, parasitic coupling, and heat dissipation become dominant concerns. Recent demonstrations of D-band network analyzers and improved OTA test facilities reveal how instrumentation continues to evolve in lockstep with device complexity.

At the same time, efficiency pressures are reshaping every design decision. Engineers face dual challenges: delivering high power for infrastructure and radar while minimizing consumption for portable and battery-powered systems. Advances in thermal materials, dynamic biasing, and efficient power amplifier topologies are essential just to keep the next generation of mmWave hardware stable under continuous load.

Policy, Spectrum, And Emerging RF Applications

Underlying these technical leaps are regulatory developments that will shape RF deployment for years. Policy groups across major regions are assessing shared-spectrum approaches to mid- and high-GHz bands, paving the way for dynamic resource allocation and coexistence strategies that balance commercial, defense, and satellite requirements.

At the system level, new applications are reimagining RF as more than a conduit for data. RF energy harvesting, contactless power transfer, and low-power radar imaging are finding roles in biomedical sensing, environmental monitoring, and remote IoT operation. In orbit and in the stratosphere, high-frequency front ends are linking constellations of satellites and high-altitude platforms using frequencies once relegated to experimental academia.

The Unifying Vision Of 2026

By late 2026, RF engineering will represent a confluence of disciplines rather than a single domain. From AI-augmented design to D-band integration, from ultra-wide bandgap materials to adaptive thermal architectures, the field’s momentum is unmistakable. For engineers, the challenge – and opportunity – will lie in thinking of circuits, antennas, materials, and algorithms not as independent specialties but as symbiotic elements of a single electromagnetic ecosystem. The systems that will define the next decade of connectivity and sensing are already taking shape today, at the forefront of frequency, integration, and intelligence.