8,000 virtual participants attended this year's IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium (IMS), the industry's largest event for RF and microwave technology. With nearly 200 companies virtually exhibiting the newest products and services being offered in the RF and microwave industry, this annual conference and exhibition of the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S) is the flagship conference of Microwave Week.
This year's event was centered around the theme of 'Connectivity Matters.' Keynotes, special events and panel presentations dove deeper into the event's five pillars that link the world: 5G & 6G networks, aerospace and defense programs, autonomous vehicles, the digital economy and ensuring the connection of under-represented communities. As the first virtual edition of IMS, all content is available on-demand for registered participants through September 30, 2020.
Virtual attendees included RF designers, researchers, developers and academics representing more than 80 countries including China, India, Japan and the United States. Featured exhibitors included Analog Devices, Cadence, Keysight Technologies and Qorvo with media organizations like Microwave Journal and everythingRF covering the show's must-see highlights.
"Despite the unique challenges we've experienced in 2020, IMS once again gathered the best and brightest in RF & microwave technology, as well as the industry's leading companies, to further advance the next generation of technology," said Tim Lee, IMS2020 general chair. "We look forward to continuing this annual gathering in 2021 with an in-person show hosted in Atlanta."
The IMS2020 speaker lineup stole the show with Thomas Cho, executive vice president and head of Infra & Design Technology Center at Samsung, kicking things off with a presentation titled "Is the third wave coming in CMOS RF?" The informative talk was followed by a keynote on "The Flexible Future of RF" from Ali Hajimiri, Bren Professor of Electrical Engineering and Medical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. Featured keynotes also included a talk from Doreen Bogdan-Martin, director of the Telecommunication Development Bureau of the International Telecommunication Union, about digital technologies that are changing the world and a presentation from Hartmut Neven, Engineering Director of Google AI Quantum Team, on the future or quantum computing.
The RFIC 2020 Best Industry Paper was awarded to Amit Singh, Mustafa Sayginer, Michael J. Holyoak, Joseph Weiner, John Kimionis, Mohamed Elkhouly, Yves Baeyens and Shahriar Shahramian at Nokia Bell Labs for their paper on "A D-Band Radio-on-Glass Module for Spectrally-Efficient and Low-Cost Wireless Backhaul." Han Hao, Lin Du, Andrew G. Richardson, Timothy H. Lucas, Mark G. Allen, Jan Van der Spiegel and Firooz Aflatouni from the University of Pennsylvania received the RFIC 2020 Best Student Paper award. Their paper titled " A Hybrid-Integrated Artificial Mechanoreceptor in 180nm CMOS" highlighted a low-power wireless chip for an implantable tactile sensor system.
The IMS Best Student Paper was awarded to Yuchen Cao at the University of Central Florida for a piece on "Dual-Octave-Bandwidth RF-Input Pseudo-Doherty Load Modulated Balanced Amplifier with ≥10-dB Power Back-Off Range." "A 28GHz, 2-Way Hybrid Phased-Array Front-End for 5G Mobile Applications" by N. Cho, H.-S. Lee, H. Lee and W.-N. Kim at Samsung Electronics, Suwon, Korea won first place in the IMS Industry Paper Competition. Additionally, the IMS Best Advanced Practice Paper was awarded to M. Gal-Katziri, A. Fikes, F. Bohn, B. Abiri, M.R. Hashemi and A. Hajimiri from the California Institute of Technology and Guru, Inc. for their work titled "Scalable, Deployable, Flexible Phased Array Sheets."
IMS2021 will be held June 6-11, 2021 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, Ga. Booth selection is currently underway and industry experts are invited to submit their technical papers through December 16, 2020.