International Microwave Symposium Research Articles

Exposing Youth to State-of-the-Art Microwave Technologies at the International Microwave Symposium (IMS) Week

Exposing Youth to State-of-the-Art Microwave Technologies at the International Microwave Symposium (IMS) Week

IEEE Society Interaction, Industry Engagement, and Young Professionals Are the Future of the MTT-S [President’s Column

From my perspective in June 2023, the IEEE Microwave Theory and Technology Society (MTT-S) is a vibrant Society, with many activities ongoing related to our technical field. Several conferences have occurred with a significant impact on our members; those include the International Microwave and Antenna Symposium (IMAS), in Cairo, Egypt ( <xref ref-type="fig" rid="fig1" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Figure 1</xref> ); the IEEE Wireless and Microwave Technology Conference, in Florida, USA; the IEEE Texas Symposium on Wireless and Microwave Circuits and Systems, in Texas, USA; the IEEE MTT-S International Wireless Symposium, in Qingdao, China; and the IEEE Workshop on Signal and Power Integrity, in Aveiro, Portugal. For June, we have an entire month of events, including the brand-new Wireless Power Transfer and Exhibition, in San Diego, CA, USA; the IEEE RF Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium; our flagship conference, the IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium; and the Automatic Radio Frequency Techniques Group Microwave Measurement Conference, all co-located in San Diego. At the end of the month, the International Conference on Numerical Electromagnetic and Multiphysics Modeling and Optimization will be held in Winnipeg, MB, Canada. At all these events, we have a vibrant number of Young Professionals (YPs) events planned along with our industry colleagues, creating an excellent opportunity for academic, industry, and government interaction, impacting the future of microwaves and technology worldwide.

A Look at the June Issue [From the Editor’s Desk

Welcome to the 2023 International Microwave Symposium (IMS2023) and the June issue of <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">IEEE Microwave Magazine</i> . IMS2023, our flagship conference, is meeting this month in San Diego with several other colocated conferences, all part of Microwave Week. In last month’s issue, we provided you with an advanced look at the many activities, such as the technical sessions, workshops, and networking events, as part of our IMS2023 focus issue. As we have done in years past, copies of both the May and June issues of <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">IEEE Microwave Magazine</i> can be found in your delegate bags and at various locations on the exhibit floor. I hope to see you there!

The Greatest Microwave/RF/Wireless Technology Show Is in San Diego [President’s Column

The greatest microwave/RF/wireless technology show is in San Diego, CA, USA. The International Microwave Symposium (IMS) is coming to San Diego in June. IMS is the most significant event for microwave enthusiasts, students, engineers, researchers, and professors. I attended my first IMS in 1998, in Baltimore, MD, USA, and since then, IMS has continued to be where I want to be every year; the networking aspect of this conference, combined with the exhibition, where the latest industry instruments are presented, is a crucial moment of our year.

See You in San Diego in June! [From the Editor’s Desk

The International Microwave Symposium (IMS) is the IEEE Microwave Theory and Technology Society’s (MTT-S’s) flagship conference, and this major MTT-S event is right around the corner. With a wide range of technical sessions, panel sessions, networking sessions, receptions, and, of course, the huge exhibition, IMS2023 will truly be, as the conference slogan states, where you will find <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">The Coolest Ideas Under the Sun</i> in microwave engineering. You can find the latest about IMS2023 at the conference link, <uri xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">https://ims-ieee.org/</uri> , and later in this issue, you will find a preview of the events at IMS2023.

IMS2023 Guest Editor’s Welcome

This special issue of <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">IEEE Microwave Magazine</i> is focused on the International Microwave Symposium (IMS) for 2023, which will be held in sunny San Diego, CA, USA, from 11 to 16 June. The steering committee and the engineers of the area are excited to help you plan your attendance at IMS2023. It is always a great chance to network with our fellow associates and find out what new technology and innovative techniques are in the works.

IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium 11-16 June 2023

IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium 11-16 June 2023

Young Professionals’ Experience During High Efficiency Power Amplifier Student Design Competition [Young Professionals

The 18th High-Efficiency Power Amplifier (HEPA) Student Design Competition (SDC) took place at the 2022 IEEE International Microwave Symposium (IMS), on 21 June 2022. The competition was held by the IEEE Microwave Theory and Technology Society (MTT-S) Microwave High-Power Techniques Committee (MTT-12) in collaboration with Keysight Technologies. This year’s event was held in person after two years of virtual competitions (the 16th and 17th HEPA SDCs) during the COVID-19 pandemic. IEEE Young Professionals (YPs) from all the around the world gathered in Denver, CO, USA, to participate in the competition and discuss their experience in the design of HEPAs.

Guest Editorial

This Special Issue of IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques (TMTT) is comprised of the extended papers from the 2022 IEEE Microwave Theory and Technology Society (IEEE MTT-S) International Microwave Symposium (IMS2022), held in Denver, CO, USA, in June 2022. The IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium is the world’s major event on microwave technologies annually organized by the IEEE MTT-S as the society’s premier flagship conference. The conference represents a unique opportunity to bring together researchers and practitioners with diverse technical backgrounds to share the most recent advances in MHz-to-THz technologies and systems. After two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, IMS2022 came back to being an in-person-only event that was held on June 19–24, 2022, at the Colorado Convention Center, Denver.

Exploring the Peaks of Microwave Engineering: Young Professionals at IMS2022 [Young Professionals

Helping young professionals (YPs) evaluate their career goals, enhance early career skills, and boost professional networking is the charter of the International Microwave Symposium (IMS) YPs. At IMS this year, the YPs had a program track with a variety of social and technical events throughout the week designed to foster these goals and facilitate networking, interaction, and collaboration. The YP events this year centered around the YP lounge, which provided a central location for meetups, a relaxation hub, and even games. Coleman Weaver, a YP applications engineer, summed up his experience when he said, “The YP events gave me an opportunity to meet some fellow YPs, which I would have never had the opportunity to meet on such a personal level without these fun and interactive events.” He continued to say that the events “provided experiences I would never have [had].”

Let Them Eat Cake! [President’s Column

If you are like me, you are a huge fan of cake—birthday cake, wedding cake, homemade cake, ice cream cake, cake and ice cream, etc. I am pretty basic on the cake flavors; white, lemon and chocolate are most of the flavors I order. I am not a fan of coconut and nuts in cake, so that eliminates German chocolate cake and coconut cake. If there is an opportunity to eat cake, I am all in! This year at the International Microwave Symposium, we celebrated the IEEE Microwave Theory and Technology Society’s (MTT-S’s) 70th anniversary and were fortunate enough to have cake on the exhibition floor. According to the British monarchy, the 70th anniversary is also the platinum jubilee. The queen of England celebrated that feat but also passed away this year.

It’s Time for the December RWW 2023 Focus Issue!

Each year, <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">IEEE Microwave Magazine</i> highlights two of the IEEE Microwave Theory and Technology Society’s (MTT-S’s) significant conferences: the flagship International Microwave Symposium (IMS), in the May issue, and the Radio and Wireless Week (RWW) series of co-located conferences, in the December issue. As you can tell by the cover date (and cover image), we are continuing this tradition with the December issue, highlighting RWW 2023, which will be held next month in Las Vegas, NV, USA. If “RWW” and “Las Vegas” sound familiar when read together, it is because RWW 2022 was also in Las Vegas. The conference hotel location may be different for RWW 2023, but the event will still be within the famous Las Vegas entertainment area. This month’s RWW 2023 focus issue contains a series of technical features that represent some of the technical areas in the RWW co-located conferences as well as a number of columns by the various committees that have been working hard to put together an exciting conference as we come out of pandemic restrictions.

Guest Editorial

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning have experienced phenomenal success in the past decade in signal processing, image and speech recognition, robotics, autonomous systems, and more. This success is also coupled with the expanding applications of AI and machine learning in broad areas of science and engineering. The microwave community is among the earliest in exploring machine learning and artificial neural networks (ANN) for wireless and wireline electronic device, and circuit and system designs. Early works that appeared in the IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium (IMS) are, for example, ANN for microstrip design (1993), ANN for microwave circuit analysis and optimization (1994), ANN for via interconnect (1996), and ANN for microwave computer-aided design (1996). The first time that IMS hosted a workshop on this topic (Applications of ANN for Microwave Design) was in IMS 1997, where the workshop was organized by Profs. K. C. Gupta and Michel Nakhla, and the invited speakers included R. L. Mahajan, K. C. Gupta, M. S. Nakhla, G. L. Creech, and Q. J. Zhang. Over the subsequent years, many researchers from around the world have contributed to the continuing development of ANN/machine learning techniques for microwave design. Several factors drove the development, one being the learning and generalization ability of ANN to learn computationally expensive microwave modeling/design problems offline, and to provide fast solutions to the problems during online design tasks. Another driving factor is the ability of ANN to learn microwave relationships directly from data even if analytical formulas for the targeted relationship are not available. From this angle, various ANN-based inverse modeling methods are developed, providing direct solutions to microwave design problems which otherwise would require expensive iterative process to solve. Further integrations between the microwave and machine learning disciplines led to knowledge-based approaches for modeling and design incorporating existing microwave-specific knowledges with the learning capabilities of ANNs, and technologies addressing cost of microwave data generation to perform effective machine learning for microwave applications.

IMS2023 Perspective From the Top [Women in Microwaves

The International Microwave Symposium (IMS) 2023 in San Diego is less than a year away! For the first time in 28 years, IMS will be held in sunny San Diego, and it will be the coolest show. The IMS2023 organizing committee is made up of a diverse group of people in the microwave community. The technical program committee cochairs are Dominique Schreurs and Pete Zampardi, spanning academia and industry. José Rayas-Sánchez and Apolinar Reynoso-Hernández are heading up the focus on microwaves in Latin America. Steve Huettner is working on the historical exhibit (representing the crusty hardware guy in the desert), along with Steve Stitzer. Judy Warner and Ryan Baker are leading the Marketing, Publicity, Publications, and Promotions team. These are just a few examples of the range of the IMS2023 team that is reflected in the topics and ideas of 2023. We are spearheading themes such as “Microwaves in Latin America,” “Model-Based Systems Engineering and Digital Twins,” “Space,” and “Biomedical Applications.”

Peanut Butter Milk Stout [MicroBusiness

I very much enjoyed attending the International Microwave Symposium (IMS2022) in Denver last June. Among the many outstanding activities was the welcome reception on Monday evening. It was outdoors in a sculpture garden and featured a variety of food options as well as a broad selection of craft beers from local brewers. When I got there, I went to the closest brewery’s station and sampled a couple of their offerings. I didn’t bother trying their Peanut Butter Milk Stout. I know that I wouldn’t enjoy a beer like that. I like a good stout from time to time. I also think peanut butter is quite tasty. But I don’t see the appeal of mixing them. I’m a bit of a purist in these things. I’ve often told friends and family that I like beer that tastes like beer and coffee that tastes like coffee. No hazelnut vanilla java for me, please!

Meet the Editors

Meet the Editors

Have Conference, Will Travel [President’s Column

I have been taking advantage of the president’s travel budget to have a first-hand experience of our vast number of conferences. During the month of July, I accumulated 22,893 air miles (calculated by <uri xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">www.airmilescalculator.com</uri> ) and visited 10 airports, four rental car companies, two train stations, and four conferences. It has truly been a blessing and a blast: a blessing in that I have been safe in all of my harebrained travels and a blast because it sure does make the summer go fast. It all started with the International Microwave Symposium 2022 (IMS2022). I believe those who attended were so excited to be together after two years that I became overly excited about venturing out to other conferences. Since IMS, we have had six conferences around the world, and the latter half of the year is actually more loaded with conferences than the first half.

Welcome to the July Issue [From the Editor’s Desk

Welcome to the July issue of <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">IEEE Microwave Magazine</i> . Although I’m writing this “From the Editor’s Desk” column in early April, I predict that you and I attended the 2022 International Microwave Symposium (IMS), in Denver, Colorado. Making predictions is hazardous, especially about the future (with apologies to the originators of the quote, often attributed to a number of people, including Danish politician Karl Kristian Steincke and American baseball player Yogi Berra), but I am sure that everyone who attended IMS2022 was glad to be back in the conference scene of learning new technologies, seeing old friends, and making new ones. IMS is truly a unique conference, in that it blends our microwave engineering practices of theory, application, and hardware into a “see it all in one place” experience. And, as I mentioned in last month’s column, it looks like the trend toward more in-person conferences (or at least with a significant in-person component) is continuing, another sign that we are returning to approaching a prepandemic normal.

Volunteering [MicroBusiness

I was the general chair of the 2009 IEEE International Microwave Symposium (IMS) in Boston. At the time, the largest hotel chain in Boston was Starwood Hotels and Resorts. The Boston Sheraton, two Westins, and the Boston Park Plaza were all Starwood hotels. It was important for us to include these hotels in our housing block. Similarly, Starwood wanted us to include its hotels in our block since we would be the dominant event in Boston for an entire week.

Welcome to the June Issue [From the Editor’s Desk

For many years, the issues of <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">IEEE Microwave Magazine</i> are not only sent out to IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S) members in the manner in which they subscribe (hard copy or electronic), but they are also placed inside the delegate bags at the MTT-S’s flagship conference, the International Microwave Symposium (IMS). For 2022, we are again including this month’s issue, the June 2022 issue, as the second insert for the delegate bags as a way to show the “Breadth of the MTT-S,” that is, examples of the wide-ranging topics that fall within our field of interest (see the MTT-S field of interest statement at <uri xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">https://mtt.org/field-interest-statement/</uri> ).