During World War II, microwave engineering played a significant role in developing radar that could accurately locate enemy ships and planes with a focused beam of EM radiation.
The foundations of this discipline are found in Maxwell's equations and the work of Heinrich Hertz, William Thomson's waveguide theory, J.C. Bose, the klystron from Russel and Varian Bross, as well as contributions from Perry Spencer, and others.
Microwave frequency usage is significant for the design of shipboard radar because it makes possible the detection of smaller targets.
[2] Apparatus and techniques may be described qualitatively as "microwave" when the wavelengths of signals are roughly the same as the dimensions of the equipment, so that the lumped-element model is inaccurate.
As a consequence, practical microwave technique tends to move away from the discrete resistors, capacitors, and inductors used with lower frequency radio waves.
Effects of reflection, polarization, scattering, diffraction and atmospheric absorption usually associated with visible light are of practical significance in the study of microwave propagation.
The University of Massachusetts Amherst provides research and educational programs in microwave remote sensing, antenna design and communications systems.
[7][8][9] Bradley University offers an undergraduate and a graduate degree in its Microwave and Wireless Engineering Program.