Along with most, I was rather sad to hear that Steve Jobs passed away the other day. He was truly a brilliant and driven individual following his own path. Coincidently, the news reached me on the same day that I finished writing about the innovative spirit at Apple as part of our cover story for November. The timing was truly uncanny. I am very pleased to pay tribute to Jobs' life, work and contributions to technology while celebrating the accomplishments of our own industry. Here is a look at the editorial content ahead.
November – Control Components
Being our passive and control components issue, November is the month we typically focus on devices such as couplers, filters, dividers/combiners, switches, attenuators, and passive elements such as inductors, capacitors, etc. To mix things up this year, we decided to write about ten different technologies that are in various stages of development and may redefine the performance or physical attributes of tomorrow's passive devices. Doing so, we start with a little back story of innovators from the past (i.e. Steve Jobs and Apple) who were willing to "Think Different". The article then examines ten different technologies in advanced materials, structure, manufacturing, etc. that have been presented at technical conferences or as published research. Hopefully, we will provide a helpful state of development trajectory for your favorite new up and coming technology. Speaking of materials – look for an article from Rogers on improved thermal management using advanced circuit materials. IC-based passives are also covered in a little more depth with a look at high resolution spiral inductors from University of Alabama as well as a perspective on RF Integrated Passive devices from Valpey Fisher. Filters and Diplexers are also represented this month with several design articles on each.
November Supplement – Mobile Communications
The Mobile World Congress may be a few months away, but we like to start thinking about the world's largest mobile industry event and its host city, Barcelona a little bit early. Our RF and Mobile Communications supplement is very much geared toward this show, where it will get a bonus distribution. Of all the magazines that end up in the pub bins at MWC, I think Microwave Journal stands apart for its' in-depth coverage of the technology behind the mobility. Perhaps that is why it seems to disappear faster than most of the other trade magazines that are there. For people who need to understand topics such as PA optimization for LTE, designing MIMO antennas with metamaterials, channel and power distribution in 3G networks or LTE advanced carrier aggregation – we have got the book.
December – ISM Applications
In December we take our annual look at microwave technology applied to the diverse markets represented by industrial, scientific and medical applications. In this issue, we welcome back author Dr. Simon Cotton from Queens University of Belfast. Dr. Cotton wrote our well-received cover story for the August 2010 supplement on ad-hoc communication networks for covert operations. In this issue, Cotton discusses how the availability of body-to-body networks could bring great social benefits, including significant healthcare improvements through the use of body worn sensors for the widespread, routine monitoring and treatment of illness away from medical centers. This could greatly reduce the current strain on health budgets and help make the government's vision of healthcare at home for the elderly a reality. Cotton will discuss how engineers from Queen's renowned Institute of Electronics, Communications and Information Technology (ECIT), are working on a new project based on the rapidly developing science of body centric communications. His team is investigating how small sensors carried by members of the public, in items such as next generation smartphones, could communicate with each other to create potentially vast body-to-body networks (BBN). The new sensors would interact to transmit data, providing 'anytime, anywhere' mobile network connectivity.