Highlights From The IEEE MTT-S 2007 International Microwave Symposium
By Jim Pomager
Editor in Chief
Despite
its somewhat inconvenient location (in the middle of the Pacific Ocean) and its inherent recreational
"distractions," Hawaii proved to be a gracious and effective host for the 2007 IEEE MTT-S
International Microwave Symposium (IMS 2007). Aside from its obvious benefits – wonderful weather, beautiful scenery, laid-back island atmosphere, etc. – Honolulu also boasted a sparkling convention
center, plentiful accommodations, efficient transportation, and some really
great food. Plus, Hawaii's tropical climate (and open-air
lobbies) gave attendees the prefect excuse to doff their jackets and ties for
the week, opting instead to fill the Hawaii Convention Center with an array of colorful Hawaiian
shirts.In all, a reported 7,307 attendees made the long trek to Honolulu for IMS 2007, 40% fewer than last year (though it should be noted that San Francisco, site of IMS 2006, was a near-ideal location for this event). Technical attendance, on the other hand, was down only 19%, attributable to Microwave Week's consistently strong technical program. And the exhibition… well, let's just say that the exhibition met most expectations (more on that later). Thanks, once again, to the steering committee and all of the other volunteers who contributed their time and energy to this successful show.
Following are some of highlights and observations from IMS 2007. Click on the bulleted items below to jump directly to specific sections of the article.
- Plenary
Session
- Keynote
Addresses
- Battleship
Event
- Remembering
Drs. Young And Gupta
- Gallium
Nitride (GaN)
- Awards
Banquet
- Exhibition
- Atlanta
2008
Plenary Session Honors
Hawaiian Culture, IEEE Fellows
Each year, the plenary session welcomes attendees to IMS and officially
commences the technical program… usually with a uniquely local theme. The 2007
installment, held Tuesday morning of the show, was no exception – it was a
true Hawaiian spectacle that proudly showcased the island state's Polynesian
heritage. The session opened to the sights of erupting volcanoes and lava flows
(on video screens, of course) and the sounds of multiple conch shells being
blown, followed by a procession of hula dancers accompanied by traditional chant
and song.
Wayne
Shiroma, the IMS 2007 chairman, then took the stage, greeting the audience with e
komo mai ("welcome," in Hawaiian) and encouraging everyone to respond
with a hearty aloha ("hello").
After a brief speech, Dr. Shiroma introduced Tatsuo Itoh, IMS 2007 Technical
Program Committee (TPC) chairman, who gave a brief overview of the technical
program. Dr. Itoh reported that the 2007 TPC had received the second-most paper
submissions in IMS history, with 1,067 submissions coming in from 44 different
countries. (Approximately 50% of submissions were accepted for presentation.)
Next
up was J. Stevenson Kenney, 2007 IEEE MTT-S president. He provided a quick
update on the society: MTT-S membership is up to 12,043 individuals in 118
chapters worldwide, the majority of membership is now located outside the
Dr.
Kenney then moved directly to the presentation of the 2007 IEEE
Fellow awards, which recognize members of "unusual and outstanding
professional distinction." The 16 MTT-S members that were evaluated by the MTT-S
society and elected to the grade of fellow were:
- Edward
Ackerman (for contributions to the optimization of analog optical links)
- Fadhel
Ghannouchi (for contributions to advanced microwave amplification circuits
and subsystems)
- Giovanni
Ghione (for contributions to numerical physics-based modeling of passive and
active integrated microwave components
- Ramesh
K. Gupta (for contributions to monolithic microwave integrated circuits)
- Stefan
Heinen (for contributions to radio frequency integrated circuits and
wireless systems)
- Ian
Hunter (for contributions to theory and design of microwave filters)
- Charles
Jackson (for leadership in the development of high-temperature
superconductor microwave devices, quasi-optical techniques, and
millimeter-wave subsystems)
- William
Jemison (for contributions to microwave photonics for radar and
communications)
- Bumman
Kim (for contributions to linear power amplifiers, gallium arsenide
microwave and millimeter-wave power devices, and monolithic microwave
integrated circuits)
- Dalma
Novak (for contributions to enabling technologies for the implementation of
fiber radio systems)
- Hiroyo
Ogawa (for contributions to microwave and millimeter-wave technology)
- Aaron
Oki (for technical innovation in advancing gallium arsenide and indium
phosphide microelectronics technology)
- Abbas
Omar (for contributions to techniques for the analysis of microwave
structures)
- Jose
Pedro (for contributions to nonlinear distortion analysis of microwave
devices and circuits)
- Jan
Verspecht (for contributions to the area of large-signal microwave
measurements)
- John
Wood (for contributions to the nonlinear microwave device and behavioral
modeling, and technology)
Also
recognized were two MTT-S members who recently received distinguished IEEE
awards (click on the award names for more information):
- Douglas
Rytting, who received the IEEE
Joseph F. Keithley Award in Instrumentation & Measurement (for
seminal technical and leadership contributions to microwave network analyzer
technology)
- Les
Besser, who received the IEEE
EAB Meritorious Achievement Award in Continuing Education (for
leadership, excellence in teaching, and world-wide coverage of continuing
education training for RF/microwave technology at all levels and for
teaching more than 10,000 engineers in 30 years)
Keynotes Tackle
Following
the awards ceremony, the plenary session continued with two keynote addresses.
First was "The Future of Mobile Broadband" by Anil Kripalani, senior VP for
global technology affairs at Qualcomm, who explained his view of the current,
and future, mobile communications environment. More than 1 billion people have
access to 3G mobile broadband networks today, he said, and the converged
wireless device has become the "fourth screen in our lives" (though he
believes it trumps the other three – movie, television, and PC – because
it's always with you). A substantial portion of his talk centered on the race
to 4G, and his opinion that 3G will ultimately beat WiMAX to the finish line, as
a result of performance, infrastructure, and cost concerns. This was certainly
an interesting counterpoint to last year's plenary keynote by Ron Resnick of
the WiMAX Forum (see related
story).
The
second keynote, by Dr. Ryuji Kohno of the
USS Missouri Battleship
Plays Host To VIP Event
RF Globalnet was honored
to be one of the few media outlets invited to attend Ansoft's HFSS v11 VIP
Customer Event aboard the USS Missouri Battleship in
Industry Gathers To
Celebrate Lives Of Drs. Young, Gupta
Over
the last year, the microwave industry lost two of its guiding lights – Dr. Leo
Young and Dr. K. C. Gupta – and the society paid tribute to them with special
sessions during IMS 2007. Dr. Young, who passed away at the age of 80 in
September 2006, pioneered the development of microwave filter technology,
publishing 14 books and over 100 technical articles, and receiving 20 patents.
During his distinguished career, Dr. Young was the U.S. Department of
Defense's (DoD) director of research, and he also served as president of the
IEEE and MTT-S.
Dr. Gupta, who passed away at age 66 in February 2007, was a pioneer in the field of microwave education and computer-aided design (CAD). Among his many books were Microstrip Lines and Slotlines, Computer-Aided Design of Microwave Circuits, and Neural Networks for RF and Microwave Design. Dr. Gupta was the founding editor for the International Journal of RF and Microwave Computer-Aided Engineering and served as MTT-S president in 2005. He and Dr. Young were remembered fondly at IMS 2007, and both will be greatly missed.
Gallium
nitride (GaN) was the hot technology at IMS 2007, beating out last year's
winner, WiMAX, by a fairly wide margin. During this year's exhibition, many
companies displayed new GaN devices at their booths. And by my count, there were
no fewer than 23 technical sessions, four interactive forum presentations, one
workshop, one focused session, and one panel session focusing on this
semiconductor material, which is starting to gain momentum in high-power,
high-frequency, and optoelectronic applications.
On
Wednesday, I joined several hundred other attendees at the lunchtime panel
session on GaN's market readiness. The panel, moderated by Mark Rosker of the
DoD's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), sought to answer the
question, "Is GaN Ready for Prime Time?" The general response from panelists
Mike Wojtowicz (Northrop Grumman Space Technology), Toshi Kikkawa (Fujitsu),
Paul Saunier (TriQuint Semiconductor), Jeff Brown (RF Micro Devices), and Dr.
John Palmour (Cree) was: "It depends on what you want to do with it." Their
general consensus was that the efficiency, power performance, and
manufacturability of GaN devices have been clearly demonstrated, and GaN
technology has already been designed into real systems. On the other hand, they
acknowledged that several key issues still remain, including limited reliability
data, higher substrate costs, and lack of associated gain at millimeter-wave
frequencies.
Major Awards Bestowed During
MTT-S Banquet
The
MTT-S Awards Banquet, held Wednesday night, was an opportunity for attendees to
mingle, enjoy a fine dinner and entertainment, and honor the 2007 winners of the
society's major awards. Following were the awards conferred during the banquet
(click on the name of each award for more information):
- Microwave Career Award: Robert J. Wenzel (for a career of leadership, meritorious achievement, creativity, and outstanding contributions in the fields of microwave theory and techniques)
- Distinguished Service
Award:
- Distinguished Educator Award: Les Besser and Kai Chang (for outstanding achievements as an educator, mentor, and role model of microwave engineers and engineering students)
- Microwave Pioneer Award: Alan Sokal and Nathan Sokal (for their development of the Class-E power amplifier)
- Microwave Application Award: Robert Weigel (for the development of ultra-high frequency microwave acoustic devices for wireless communication and sensing)
- Outstanding Young Engineer Award: Christophe Caloz (for pioneering contributions to the development of novel concepts and applications of electromagnetic metamaterials) and Vesna Radisic (for leadership in the field of microwave applications of defected ground structures, active antennas, and millimeter-wave electronics)
- N. Walter Cox Award: Jenshan Lin (for exemplary service, given in a spirit of selfless dedication and cooperation)
- Microwave Prize: Thomas
Lüthi and Christian Mätzler (for their paper "Stereoscopic Passive
Millimeter-Wave Imaging and Ranging")
As most people expected,
the IMS 2007 exhibition was modest. Only 368 companies had booths, compared to
546 companies in 2006, and there were some notable absences (more than a few
people mentioned Mini-Circuits as an example). In addition, many companies
scaled back their booth size, some considerably, for this year's show. These
factors, combined with the decreased overall attendance, resulted in a
relatively quiet week: Tuesday (particularly the morning) was busy, Wednesday
was very slow, and Thursday was only a bit better.
But much to my surprise, exhibitors were not overly disappointed with the exhibition. In many cases, this was a simply a result of lowered expectations – it was hard for people to be upset when they had anticipated the low attendance figures. Some companies were very happy with the quality of the attendees, saying that even though traffic was light, a higher percentage of visitors were actually interested customers (rather than the usual tire kickers). Others, I think, were just mellowed by the island vibe, and nothing would bring them down! For all of the highlights from the IMS 2007 exhibition, look for RF Globalnet's annual "Notes From The Exhibition Floor" article series, to be published starting later this week.
With the great