Rising PhD in Wireless looking for advice
Background:
International student in the US. Just graduated from a MS in Communications systems and fortunately landed a firmware engineering summer internship at a big tech and a PhD at a decent school that starts spring 2027. I studied CE and then AI for undergrad, but decided to transfer to wireless as it’s more interesting to me and has less meaningless competition.
Thought:
I feel the wireless industry is quite dead now. Most of the ongoing research for 6G at either PHY or MAC layer won’t provide tremendous cost reduction to the existing cellular infrastructure, and there is no killer use case that pushes for better performance (lower latency/higher throughput). Like the whole 6G is not something really needed for now. This feeling is exacerbated by witnessing how AI has really revolutionized many digital industries. I start to worry about my job prospect since I can’t imagine why wireless industry would continue to hire more engineers.
Questions:
- My own interests aside, what do you think I should study for a PhD in the broad topic of wireless? Can you suggest some concrete directions in that’s worth going in terms of industry/academic prospect?
- How difficult do you think it is to find an industry job in Wireless (either UE or RAN side)? Is it getting harder or easier?
- If I want to work on cellular, which layer (PHY or MAC) do you think will see more REAL growth/innovation e.g. Open/AI RAN, digital twin, neural network receiver etc