For those of you who were fortunate enough to attend, the Thursday evening Crab Feast (Figure 4) was the highlight of the week. This event has become a Baltimore IMS tradition that was started in 1986 by the General Chair Ed Niehenke who is also MTT-S’s long serving Ombudsman. Ed served as a valued advisor to our Steering Committee and attended just about every IMS2011 planning meeting where he made sure to remind us that we
needed to plan the best Crab Feast ever. We think we succeeded, as it was great to see everyone relax in a very informal atmosphere and get to know each other on a more personal level. Every year IMS takes carefully considered steps to provide an improved overall experience. In our rapidly changing world, innovation is necessary in all things, including conferences. Of course, it isn’t until afterwards that we obtain the feedback needed to
determine if we were successful. We hope that those of you who attended were pleased with the experience and arrived back home with eager anticipation of attending IMS2012 in Montreal. We encourage you to send us (chair@ ims2011.org) your ideas, thoughts, and comments about your experience during Microwave Week 2011, which we will pass along to the IMS2012 team so that your experience next year will be even better.
2011 IEEE Wireless and Microwave Technology Conference ■ Xun Gong and W. Joel D. Johnson
T
he 12th annual IEEE Wireless and Microwave Technology Conference (WAMICON) was held at beautiful Clearwater Beach, Florida, 18–19 April 2011. A total of 197 people attended this event, coming from 13 countries on six continents, including Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, Egypt, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Spain, Sweden, and the United States. The technical program for each day of this two-day conference consisted of three parallel sessions: two technical sessions and one tutorial session. A poster session was held during the reception on the first day in which both researchers and students presented their results. The organizers of WAMICON are grateful to the generous support from exhibitors and sponsors. 2011 WAMICON had 23 exhibitors and ten sponsors. Four levels of sponsorships included Platinum (Mini-Circuits and RFMD), Gold (Agilent Technologies, AWR, Harris, and Trak), Corporate (Cree and Maury Microwave), and
Media (High Frequency Electronics and Microwave Journal). The technical sessions addressed upto-date multidisciplinary research needs and interdisciplinary aspects of wireless and RF technology. The topics covered the areas of microwave and millimeterwave circuits, passive components and antennas, power amplifiers, wireless sensors and sensor networks, and wireless communications. There were also
three special sessions focusing on biomedical applications, load pull applications, and nonlinear measurements. The poster session, consisting of eight researcher and 15 student presentations provided students a good opportunity to mix with experienced people from academia, industry, and government (Figure 1). This session, in particular, has met with great reviews from both students and experienced individuals since it provides a unique opportunity for the two different generations to converse about research, work, and microwaves in general. This session style will continue in future WAMICONs. Tutorials have been a highlight of WAMICON since its inception, for their
Xun Gong (
[email protected]) is with the University of Central Florida, and W. Joel D. Johnson (
[email protected]) is with Harris Corporation. Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MMM.2011.942023 Date of publication: 7 September 2011
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Figure 1. Exhibitions and poster session at WAMICON 2011.
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(a)
(b)
Figure 2. (a) Justin Luther presented his research and (b) received the best student research presentation award.
Figure 3. Banquet was held at Hilton Hotel on the beach.
Figure 4. Dr. Linda Katehi (right) received the Rudy Henning Award from the awards chair Richard Abrahams (left). high qualities and timely topics. 2011 WAMICON had five tutorials: • “Linear Power Amplifier Design for Mobile Communications” (Dr. Bumman Kim) • “X-Parameters—New Paradigm for Interoperable Measurement, Modeling, and Simulation of Nonlinear Microwave and RF Components” (Dr. David Root) • “Microwave Sensors for Industrial Applications” (Dr. Reinhard Knoechel) • “Terahertz in Space and Applications on Earth” (Dr. Peter Siegel) • “Electromagnetic Metamaterials and their Microwave Applications” (Dr. Christophe Caloz).
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Three best conference papers and one best student research presentation were selected by a group of judges in the Technical Program Committee. The Cree Corporation sponsored the prizes to the winners: First Place Award: Mustafa Özen, Chalmers University of Technology, “High Efficiency RF Pulse Width Modulation with Tunable Load Network Class-E PA.” Second Place Award: Jung-Chih Chiao, University of Texas at Arlington, “Wireless Implants for invivo Diagnosis and Closed-Loop Treatment.” Third Place Award: Changzhi Li, Texas Technical University, “Radar Motion Sensing for Accurate Tumor Tracking in Radiation Therapy.” Best Student Research Presentation: Justin Luther, University of Central Florida, “Electrically Steerable Parasitic Radiator (ESPAR) Antenna with Reactance-Tuned Coupling and Maintained Resonance” (Figure 2). During the banquet on the evening of first day (Figure 3), General Chair James Culver, announced the recipient of the Dr. Rudy Henning award. Each year the WAMICON Awards Committee consid-
ers several nominations for individuals that have demonstrated exemplary service by encouraging students and/or mentoring young engineers to advance careers in the areas of RF/microwave and/or wireless engineering. This year, the award went to Dr. Linda P.B. Katehi, University of California, Davis (Figure 4). The Awards Committee chair, Richard Abrahams, read the citation from one of Dr. Katehi’s colleagues: Throughout the course of my professional career I cannot think of any other person that better deserves, on a national or an international level, the Rudy Henning Award than Dr. Katehi. She exemplifies the absolute and perfect model of the dedicated microwave and engineering educator and mentor, with an unparalleled degree of devotion towards her graduate and undergraduate students and collaborators . . . Over 20 of her former students are currently microwave engineering professors at top universities around the world and the rest of them hold leading positions in companies and national laboratories or organizations. On the early morning of Day 2, there was a plenary session in which two keynote speakers, Dr. Sanjay Raman, DARPA MTO, and Dr. Bruce Carlsten, Los Alamos National Laboratory, discussed the current projects and new directions of research in each of their respective organization. A panel session was held right after the plenary session addressing government perspectives on wireless and microwave systems. Dr. Robert Trew (NSF), Dr. Felix Miranda (NASA), Dr. Sanjay Raman (DARPA), and Dr. Romeo Del Rosario (ARL) introduced their organizations and interacted with the attendees. The IEEE Wireless and Microwave Technology Conference (WAMICON) is an annual event and will be held at Cocoa Beach, Florida, next year. You are invited to join us in April 2012 for stimulating and original presentations in the area of Microwave and Wireless technology. Please visit our Web page (www.wamicon.org) for information on submitting original papers.
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