Guest editorial for the special issue on modeling of μmWave and mmWave electronic devices for wireless systems: Connecting technologies to applications

Abstract

The μmWave and mmWave frequencies have been historically associated with niche applications such as space and defense; however in the last years wireless communications have caused a rapid growth of interest in mass-market applications, representing the enabling technology for the new Information Age where all “things” need to be connected. Internet of Things, Industry 4.0, and Smart Cities are portraits of this concept in different contexts, from entertainment to healthcare applications. This exciting scenario triggers the continuous increase of performance requirements such as huge bandwidth, low latency, and very high data rate of emerging wireless technologies (i.e., 5G and 6G). These demanding performance requirements drive microwave designers of devices and components towards new challenges that require innovative solutions where the outstanding properties of high-frequency technologies have to comply with the skyrocketing performance demand. Undoubtedly, it will take a lot of work to tackle the challenges that inevitably arise, but this is the way to go! This special issue, which contains 14 contributions, is dedicated to the advancement of knowledge and the development of innovative solutions in the research area of wireless applications. The aim is to have an overview from different perspectives on the challenges that arise in this fast-evolving research field. The high-quality contributions on modeling and characterization of electron devices give an in-depth understanding on the crucial role of the accurate modeling,1-6 and the benefits of this are clearly appreciable when active circuits, such as power amplifiers,6-8 passive circuits,9, 10 and antennas,11-13 have to be designed or investigated at such high frequencies. In addition to the aforementioned topics, data analyzes for specific application such as imaging are included.14 This special issue takes a step forward in the different branches of knowledge related to μmWave and mmWave devices, circuits, and systems, oriented to wireless applications from the device level up to the application level. From the reader's point of view the goal is to drive to a comprehensive overview on salient aspects of these topics and to provide interesting hints to overcome the upcoming technological challenges. This special issue has been developed during the hard year of COVID-19 pandemic that, as we well know, has led to unexpected difficulties for all people worldwide. The pandemic situation has affected every aspect of our daily life including developing research activities and building synergy among different research groups, fulcrum of the scientific knowledge growth. Everyone in the scientific community has made greater efforts to carry out their activity, therefore we really feel like to manifest a special gratefulness and respect to all the authors for their high-quality contributions and to all the reviewers for their efforts in improving the quality of the papers. We would like to extend our heartfelt thanks and appreciation to the editor-in-chief Jian-Ming Jin and to the team at Wiley for their valuable help and constant support throughout the whole publishing process from proposal to publication. We very much hope that the readers will enjoy reading this selection of articles and find them useful and inspiring for enabling advancement of wireless applications.