The Caribe Royale All-Suite Hotel and Convention Center in the Orlando, Florida was the venue for the  14th annual IEEE Wireless and Microwave Technology Conference (WAMICON 2013) that took place April 7-9th.  Every year this intimate event co-sponsored by the IEEE and MTT-S draws a loyal group of attendees from academia and the commercial sector to discuss multidisciplinary aspects of RF and wireless technology.

The three day technical program is a combination of tutorials, seminars and special sessions that started  on Sunday with two afternoon seminars emphasizing passive and active modeling, respectively, with a discussion on Electromagnetic Computational Modeling Techniques by Dr. Bruce Archambeault (IEEE Fellow, IBM Distinguished Engineer) and an update on nonlinear device modeling techniques and load-pull by Gary Simpson, Maury Microwave.  

Dr. Archambeault, an author of numerous papers on computational electromagnetic, also conducted two application-centric tutorials the following morning with a look at the “often misunderstood concept of signal grounds” for high speed digital design and EMC/EMI control in his first talk and “EMC issues for PCBs” in his second tutorial. Monday’s afternoon tutorial was focused on more traditional RF/microwave design with a presentation by MTT-S distinguished lecturer and IEE fellow, Dr. John Wood of Maxim Integrated Products on High-efficiency Power Amplifiers and Transmitters.

The third and final day of the event was structured around two technical tracks and a tutorial session running in parallel before the two plenary sessions, a group lunch and the final afternoon talks that concluded the conference. The morning plenary presentations were delivered by Edward Takacs, the President of Array Wireless who talked about microwave device and design impacting the performance of PAs in mobile video links following by a look at the research toward developing RF FPGA by Dr. William Chappell from the Microsystems Technology Office of DARPA (presented by a colleague from DARPA in Dr. Chappell’s absence.

The technical sessions were organized around the topics of active modeling/PA design, passive components and emerging technologies and the days tutorials included “Microwave Near-Field Imaging of Human Tissue: Hopes, Challenges, Outlook” by Natalia K. Nikolova of McMaster University and Andrei Grebennikov of RFAxis presented a two part tutorial on “High-Efficiency RF and Microwave Power Amplifiers: Historical Aspect and Modern Trends”.

One major highlight of the event is the Rudolf Henning Distinguished Mentoring award ceremony. This award was named after Dr. Rudolph Henning, professor emeritus, in the department of electrical engineering at the University of South Florida’s College of Engineering, who dedicated his career to attracting students, both at the secondary school and college level, to pursue a career in RF/Microwave engineering. This year recipient, Dr. John Volakis, the Chope Chair professor and director of the ElectroScience Laboratory at Ohio State University, was recognized for his service encouraging students and young engineers to advance careers in the areas of RF/Microwave and Wireless Engineering.

The three winners for paper/poster competition at WAMICON were:

 Best Conference Paper Award

Ramzi Darraji and  Fadhel Ghannouchi (no photo)

Title: High Efficiency Doherty Amplifier Combining Digital Adaptive Power Distribution and Dynamic

Phase Alignment

 Best  Student Conference Paper  Award

Ibrahim T. Nassar

Title: Design and Characterization of a Passive Harmonic Sensor Embedded in Sand

Advisor: Prof. Thomas Weller, University of South Florida

Best Student Research Presentation Award

Maria Cordoba

Title: High Resolution Scanning Microwave Microscope for Characterization of Solids and Liquids

Advisor: Prof. Thomas Weller, University of South Florida

Industry Presence

Approximately 30 commercial vendors participated in the WAMICON exhibition, providing information on a host of products addressing military and commercial wireless and microwave systems such as 3G/4G, WLAN, SDR, 802.xx, and UWB, SATCOM, Radar, etc, ranging in frequency range from RF up to mm-wave. Reflecting the focus of the technical program, exhibitors and sponsors were RF/microwave companies providing components, cables/connectors as well as tes equipment and software solutions for design and verification.

Software/Test& Measurement:

CST, ANSYS, EM Software & Systems, Agilent, AWR, Rohde & Schwarz, Maury Microwave, Modelithics, Sonnet,  Focus Microwave and Ztec were among the circuit, system and electromagnetic software simulation and test equipment vendors.

Components/Cables & Connectors/Semiconductors & ICs

SV Microwave, Reactel, SRI Connector, Florida RF Labs, Cree, TriQuint, Synergy Microwave, Anatech Electronics, Centellex, Gowanda, Pickering Interfaces Ltd., Taconic (Materials)

The full list of vendors can be found at
http://www.wamicon.org/ExhibitorList.html.

Check out the pictures from WAMICON 2013 in the Microwave Journal Image Gallery at
http://www.microwavejournal.com/media/photos/30.