Commercial 5G service has been formally launched in the US and Korea with the first smartphones expected before June in 2019 in both countries. 5G has certainly happened faster than expected a few years ago and should enable a year with increased activity in the IoT market. The US Defense budget is healthy in response to an increase in sophistication of the Chinese and Russian defense capabilities with solid-state technology and flexible, software driven platforms being emphasized. So we expect 2019 to be an exciting year on the editorial front with many new innovations given solid financial support in these areas and others.

Our January issue Radar and Antenna themed issue kicks off the year with a cover feature that will look at software defined antenna technologies and how they will help drive better system performance for critical IoT applications. We also have technical articles covering automotive radar sensor interference, multi-band cellular coverage with small chip antennas and tuners, nonlinear modeling of peak power PIN limiters, and measuring peak envelope power of complex waveforms. This issue will get bonus distribution at DesignCon.

February is our High Frequency Components and PCBs themed issue that gets a big bonus distribution at Mobile World Congress so will feature several pieces on 5G (in addition distribution at EMV in Germany and RF & Microwaves in France). We will feature a couple of articles on new design approaches to mmWave phased array design, another on a new approach to 5G OTA testing, and a perspective on the disparate 5G sub-6 GHz frequencies being adopted around the world. We will try to squeeze in a couple of other articles on different topics depending on the size of the issue.

March is our Test and Measurement themed issue and annual Cable and Connector supplement. The March cover story will feature a broad look at the options for 5G OTA testing and what many of the leading test and measurement companies are offering in the way of solutions for this market. Other technical articles planned for the issue include testing digital Doherty power amplifiers, forced spurious decorrelation in digital beamforming phased arrays, high-speed data converters that enable flexible RF sampling architectures, and design of a 28 GHz narrowband filter. The Cable and Connector supplement will feature articles on mmWave connector design and 0.8 mm connectors for 110+ GHz operation.

2019 promises to be an exciting year with the release of the first 5G smartphones and new levels of sophistication in autonomous vehicles, industrial automation and smart cities. Microwave Journal will be visiting all of the major microwave related trade shows and developing content on the most innovative design, simulation and test techniques being delivered to the market.