The Best Conference You Never Attended [White Hot

Abstract

The IEEE International Communications Energy Conference (INTELEC). INTELEC has a long history that predates PELS. INTELEC was the brainchild of several Bell Labs engineers who realized the need for such a conference. The first INTELEC was held in 1978 under the auspices of the IEEE Communications Society. INTELEC continued as an annual conference at host cities all over the world. In 1991, INTELEC was transferred to PELS. T he issues a nd themes of INTELEC have evolved over the years. In the 1970s, the papers were often about the newfangled switch mode rectifiers. In the 1980s, the papers were often about the evolving distributed power architectures used in telecom equipment. In the 1990s, a key topic was powering the network as the transmission medium evolved from twisted-pair copper wires to coaxial cable and optical fiber. In the 2000s, much of the discussion focused on powering the far-flung equipment of cellular telephone networks. In today's network, with all traffic, whether voice, video, or data, being digital, the differences between data center, telephone switching office, mobile base station, and telephone central office are blurring and dissolving. The power needs of such a network are rapidly evolving. How we manage and design the power systems and converters for these new networks is the key focus of INTELEC today.