April in Florida for many in the Microwave community means one thing; it is time for the annual IEEE Wireless and Microwave Technology (WAMI) Conference, otherwise known as WAMICON. This IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S) sponsored conference which took place this week (April 12-13) in Melbourne Beach, Florida is enjoying its 11th year and by all accounts it was another success. With a focus on the latest multidisciplinary research needs and interdisciplinary aspects of wireless and RF technology, the conference program included oral presentations, poster presentations, workshops, and tutorials.
The conference grew out of a series of very successful 1-day forums organized by the University of South Florida Center for Wireless and Microwave Information Systems faculty, the WAMI Advisory Committee, and the Florida West Coast IEEE MTT/AP/ED chapter. The goal of these conferences and forums was to create a stimulating environment for the exchange of information about the status and directions of wireless technology, the educational and research challenges, and actions being taken by educators, industrial practitioners, and governmental research agencies to address these challenges.
Dr. Larry Dunleavy, served as this year’s General chair. Dunleavy, along with four faculty colleagues was responsible for establishing the USF WAMI Center. In 2001, Dr. Dunleavy co-founded Modelithics, Inc. a USF spin-off company to provide a practical commercial outlet for developed modeling solutions and microwave measurement services where he is currently serving as its President.
With the histroical ties between academia (and USF in particular) and WAMICON, it should be no surprise that there is a strong educational component to this conference as exemplified by the quantity and quality of tutorials that are part of the technical program. This year's tutorials included those of Mm-Wave Power Amplifiers taught by James Komiak, Paradigm Shifts in Filter Design with Richard Snyder, RF Waveform Engineering with Paul Tasker, SDR-Based Power Amplifiers with Fadhel Ghannouchi and Fundamentals of Digital Radio with instructor Michael Steer.
Another student focused activity was the highly successful poster session (2) that was chaired by Lester Lopez and Dr. Charles Bayis. This reviewed event took place on the second day of the conference, from 3:00-4:40 pm and included the 30” by 40” foam display board presentations of research projects conducted by the participating students. This year’s best student poster award went to Quenton Bonds, shown below accepting congratulations from Dr. Larry Dunleavy and Ray Pengelly.
Conference Highlights:
The conference got right down to business on Monday morning with a filter track chaired by Joel Johnson with presentations on SAW/BAW technology, fractal filters and UHF co-site interference filters included among the various talks. Concurrently, Ray Pengelly chaired a morning tutorial session on high efficiency power amplifiers which was taught by Dr. James Komiak of BAE Systems. After a coffee break, the late morning technical session shifted their focus toward sensors.
Monday afternoon was equally busy with parallel technical sessions on power amplifiers (chaired by Simon Wood and Larry Dunleavy) and the other track focused on Circuit Integration & Technology (Chaired by Richard Abrahams). The circuit integration track looked at RFIC design issues such as BSIM-4 lateral diode models, transmitter architecture and thermal optimization of a flip-chip WiFi front-end IC. In the power amp track, Gary Simpson of Maury Microwave gave a talk on high-power load pull with X-parameters. The late afternoon technical sessions were focused on Antennas (chaired by Gokhan Mumcu and Michael Imparato) and Circuit Design Technigues (Chaired by Jenshan Lin and Changzhi Li)
Tuesday Morning kicked off with a plenary session. Dr. Dunleavy provided the welcome message for the Tuesday opener, followed by the conferences three keynote speakers, Michael O’Reilly, VP of Engineering with Harris Corp who spoke on “Communications for DoD”, Patrick Simpkins, the Director of Engineering at the Kennedy Space Center, talking about the “Constellation Program” which is facing possible cancellation by the Obama administration and Upkar Dhaliwal, CEO of Future Wireless, on “Trends in Wireless Technology”.
After the “all-hands present” plenary, the morning’s technical sessions got under way with dual tracks on RF MEMS (co-chaired by Tom Weller and Jing Wang) and Power Amplifiers (Chaired by Ray Pengelly). Simon Wood led the tutorial track, which focused on SDR based power amplifiers.
One of the two afternoon technical sessions had a continued focus on power amplifiers, this time with an emphasis on large-signal design and device modeling issues. Waveform engineering was presented by J. Lees of Cardiff University (Paul Tasker of Cardiff University was also one of the conferences many impressive organizers) and PA guru Steve Cripps also presented a talk.
The other early afternoon session was concerned with Passive RF circuits (chaired by Scott Barker and Dimitri Peroulis). This session had talks on MEMS switches, multi-layer organic front-ends for X-band sensing (Ga Tech) and a novel technique for measuring the impedance of an on-chip patch antenna on CMOS.
Richard Abrahams of Harris Corp presents Peter Asbeck of UCSD with the Rudolf E. Henning Award
Exhibition
The conference and exhibition were held in the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Melbourne Beach, some 20 plus miles from the Kennedy Space Center and nearby sponsor, Harris Corporation. The exhibit was held in the halls connecting the various technical session and was comprised of both 8x10 tabletop booths and 8x10 pop-up booth spaces. Exhibitors included test and measurement equipment manufacturers such as Agilent, Anritsu, Rohde & Schwarz, Tektronix, and Maury Microwave; software vendors: AWR, Ansoft, Remcom and Sonnet; and component manufacturers such as Centellax, Dielectric Labs, Florida RF Labs, Mini-Circuits, Synergy Microwave, Taconic, Reactel and Trak Microwave. Also present were T&E Repco, ElectroRent, local test service company - QualTest, SRI Connector Gage Co. and Brennan Associates representing AR Worldwide, Aeroflex, RFMD, and Teledyne Storm.