Welcome to IMS2023 and the June issue!
The 2023 International Microwave Symposium (IMS2023), our flagship conference, meets in just a few weeks in San Diego with several other co-located 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 the IEEE Microwave Magazine can be found in your delegate bags and at various locations on the exhibit floor. I hope to see you there!
Each year at IMS, the newly elevated IEEE Fellows evaluated by the MTT Society are honored at one of the main events. Elevation to IEEE Fellow is major achievement in an IEEE member’s career, and so in this month’s issue, one of our columns is an introduction to this year’s Fellows that were reviewed by the MTT Society. This is a chance to read about their career paths and, for our Young Professional readers, see what it takes to achieve this recognition. Speaking of recognitions, a member of our MTT community was recently awarded the IEEE 2023 Electromagnetics Award: John Bandler. Anding Zhu, one of the Magazine’s associate editors and a member of the MTT Administrative Committee (AdCom), had a series of discussion with John Bandler and has written an extensive review of John’s career, starting with his early education and outlining his career path and his work on electromagnetics and the space-mapping concept. Many of the MTT Young Professionals also know John through the 3-Minute Thesis (3MT®) events and the article discusses how this activity started at IMS2017. The article also dispels the myth that engineers are one-dimensional by outlining some of John’s other creative outlets. Take a look at both of these articles to learn about some of the technical leaders of our MTT community.
This month’s issue contains three technical articles that cover a range of activities within the MTT-S community. The first technical feature, by Liu et al., titled “A Perspective on the Recent Progress of Graphene in Microwave Applications,” provides a look at recent applications in light of improved graphene structures. A short tutorial on graphene is provided as well as more in-depth discussions of applications such as tunable attenuators and absorbers. Our second technical feature, by Halimi et al., titled “Rectifier Design Challenges for Wireless Energy Harvesting/Wireless Power Transfer Systems: Broadening Bandwidth and Extending Input Power Range,” discusses the design challenges of rectifiers having relatively stable power conversion efficiency over a broad operating frequency and wide input power range. Various circuits are described, and performance comparison tables are shown to help the reader in understanding the current state of the art. Our third feature is related to IMS, but in this case, to IMS2022, and is an article that describes the winning design in the IMS2022 Student Design Competition’s “SDC1: Design of a Self- Interference Cancellation Coupler,” sponsored by TC-24 Microwave/ mm-Wave Radar, Sensing and Array Systems and TC-4 Microwave Passive Components and Transmission Line Structures. This student design article was ful ly peer-reviewed according to IEEE publication guidelines and is authored by Fenske et al. and is titled “Self-Interference Leakage Estimation ‘N’ Cancellation Element.” The authors go into detail on the design flow for their project as well the hardware and performance characteristics.
Our regular monthly columns are also in the issue, starting with Nuno Borges Carvalho’s President’s Message, where Nuno discusses our portfolio of recent conferences, the most recent Technical Activities Board meeting, and also provides a detailed description of two ad-hoc AdCom committees (Young Professionals and the Committee and the Industry Engagement Committees) and their chairs (Sara Pena Barros and Debabani Choudhury, respectively). The recent introduction of artificial intelligence-based engines such as ChatGBT and how they relate to a previous column [1] entitled “Artificial Stupidity” is discussed by Fred Schindler in his MicroBusiness column. James Lin takes a look at recent developments in the biological effects of electromagnetic radiation in the Health Matters column and James Chu provides a review of a new book on his bookshelf. We have reports from several conferences, in addition to technical committee and branch activities in our Conference Reports and MTT Society News columns this month, as well as the schedule of our popular MTT Webinar series from the AdCom Education Committee. Also in this issue we have the latest Women in Microwaves and Young Professionals columns, along with the solution to last month’s Enigmas, etc. column.
We end the issue on a sad note with an In Memoriam column on the life and career of a “microwave rock”’, Reinhard Knöchel. Besides being an accomplished researcher, he held many roles within the MTT-S and the European Microwave Association. He will be missed by the MTT Community.
[1] F. Schindler, “Artificial Stupidity [MicroBusiness],” in IEEE Microwave Magazine, vol. 22, no. 12, pp. 12-14, Dec. 2021, doi: 10.1109/MMM.2021.3109498.
Submitted by
Robert Caverly, Villanova University
