Pat Hindle, MWJ Editor
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Pat Hindle is responsible for editorial content, article review and special industry reporting for Microwave Journal magazine and its web site in addition to social media and special digital projects. Prior to joining the Journal, Mr. Hindle held various technical and marketing positions throughout New England, including Marketing Communications Manager at M/A-COM (Tyco Electronics), Product/QA Manager at Alpha Industries (Skyworks), Program Manager at Raytheon and Project Manager/Quality Engineer at MIT. Mr. Hindle graduated from Northeastern University - Graduate School of Business Administration and holds a BS degree from Cornell University in Materials Science Engineering.

Initial Impressions of IMS 2014

Powering the Waves!

June 6, 2014

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As IMS 2014 in Tampa wraps up, the powering the waves theme was very present starting with the kickoff reception party on Monday featuring a water skiing show staring general chair Larry Dunleavy. Larry and his team did an excellent job of running the event and the Tampa Convention center is a nice venue with close proximity to the session rooms and exhibition (not to mention it is right on the water with a great view).

Reviewing the technical sessions and discussions, I noticed much attention was paid to mmWave technologies, Internet of Things (IoT), tunable filters/antennas, high efficiency amplifiers (envelope tracking, DPD, switched mode PAs, etc.) and biomedical devices/sensors. Some companies that I though made a big splash at IMS 2014 were:

Peregrine’s latest UltraCMOS devices from their Global 1 reconfigurable CMOS front-end to their monolithic phase & amplitude controllers for Doherty PAs and high power limiters
MACOM’s GaN portfolio that includes low cost GaN on Si (planned use of 8” wafers and plastic packaging to drive down costs) and high performance GaN on SiC
Agilent and Cascade’s global partnership to deliver end to end wafer probing test systems
The AWR and ANSYS partnership to bring HFSS into Microwave Office for circuit designers
Copper Mountain’s PC-driven VNA integration with load pull and antenna measurement systems – their VNAs were being used by several companies in their booths
Anokiwave’s highly integrated CMOS core chips that can operate up to mmWave frequencies and control up to 16 antenna elements

There is quite a bit of industry consolidation going on with the large mergers of TriQuint and RFMD plus Aeroflex and Cobham. Avago also recently completed their acquisition of LSI which pushes them about $5 B in revenue. There are also several other recent acquisitions such as Hittite acquiring Keragis and MACOM’s purchase of Nitronex and Mindspeed. Hopefully, this activity is strengthening our industry and growth will continue. Microwave Journal will be putting together a full IMS 2014 wrap up including a photo gallery, video gallery and exhibition summary next week.