High Frequencies in High Places
Claude M. Weil and Roger B. Marks
1997 International Microwave Symposium Chair and Vice Chair
Don't miss out on this year's Microwave Week to be held in the Mile-high city of Denver on June 8-13! This year's event, which includes the 1997 IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium (IMS) and Exhibition, is shaping up to be as exciting as last year's event in San Francisco, which set a new attendance record. All of the advanced indicators are showing strong interest in the 1997 Symposium and have reinforced the faith and confidence of those who sought to bring this conference back to Colorado after a prolonged 24-year absence. We believe that Denver will provide an outstanding locale for the 1997 Symposium and Exhibition. It is a booming center of the wireless, cable and spaceborne telecommunications industries; it is centrally located in the nation adjacent to Colorado's magnificent Rocky Mountains; and all of the downtown hotels are within easy walking distance of the Symposium site, the spacious and modern Colorado Convention Center.
K.C. Gupta and Zoya Popovic of the University of Colorado at Boulder have done a first-class job as IMS Technical Program Co-chairs in organizing the traditionally high quality program for which the IMS is known. This year's agenda features a total of 432 refereed technical papers that will be presented in 52 platform sessions and two Interactive Forum (poster) sessions on Tuesday through Thursday. Thirty of these papers have been selected for entry in the Student Paper Competition, which will be held on Wednesday. For the first time, all student competition participants will receive travel grants to support and encourage their attendance at the IMS. Afternoon sessions will end at 5:10 pm, somewhat earlier than last year, to allow for more free evening time. Four of the platform sessions on Tuesday are Focused Sessions, which seek to accent the latest advances in certain fast-developing telecommunication areas. A fifth Focused Session on Thursday deals with the history of microwave metrology and standards. Six lunchtime panel sessions and one evening rump session, at the Adam's Mark Hotel, feature lively interactive discussions on equally hot topics. The Plenary Session on Tuesday morning highlights two new telecommunication infrastructures. Bernard Bossard, chief technical officer and co-founder of CellularVision USA, will discuss his company's pioneering work in multichannel wireless television distribution systems operating at 28 GHz in New York City (termed local multipoint distribution systems (LMDS)). Robert Dixon, chief scientist of Omnipoint Corp., will pose the question "Will the Real PCS Please Stand Up?" and discuss whether PCS is an opportunity for real technological innovation or will end up as just upbanded cellular telephony. In addition, the two other technical meetings that are a traditional part of Microwave Week take place prior to and following the IMS. The former MMWMC Symposium, now known as the RFIC Symposium, takes place on Monday and focuses on highly integrated RFICs and subsystems for commercial and military applications. Rounding out the week is the Automatic RF Techniques Group (ARFTG) Conference, which takes place on Friday at Denver's Brown Palace Hotel and will focus on new broadband television distribution networks.
The IMS '97 publications have been organized meticulously by Gerhard Koepf of SCT Inc. As in past years, all IMS registrants will receive the usual three-volume IMS digest. Following the precedent set by IMS '96, all IMS and RFIC Symposium registrants will again receive, at no extra cost, a CD-ROM containing all of this year's IMS and RFIC Symposium technical papers, plus past IMS digest and MTT-S Transactions indices and the entire IMS '97 Web site. Chris Jelks of Lockheed Martin Corp. and Joseph Donovan have put together our CD-ROM and have placed high priority on ensuring a user-friendly experience. A total of 24 workshops, which have been ably organized by Don DeGroot of NIST, provide a tutorial setting for professional development in which attendees can interact with specialists during both full- and half-day sessions as well as meal and refreshment breaks. The workshops cover many important areas of emerging technology and also involve business aspects, government regulations and Web site development.
Microwave Week also includes the largest and most comprehensive Exhibition of its kind in the microwave industry with booths reserved currently for more than 500 participating companies. The Exhibition can be found upstairs in Halls A & B of the Colorado Convention Center starting at 9:00 am on Tuesday and running through 3:00 pm on Thursday. The Exhibition also includes some 15 university booths plus the Microwave Historical Exhibit. This year, the Historical Exhibit features a rare and unique opportunity to view the original 60 GHz equipment used by the physicist Sir Jagadis Chandra Bose (1858-1937) of Calcutta, India, who performed some extraordinary experiments into the quasi-optical properties of mm-waves over a century ago. (If further interested, attend Wednesday's J.C. Bose Memorial Session, WE2C, on Millimeter and Submillimeter Waves.) We are continuing the precedent set last year by again presenting the Microwave Application & Product Seminars (mAPS), which take place on the Exhibition floor starting at noon on Tuesday and running parallel to the Exhibition hours, including lunch. These seminars are free to all registrants and Exhibition-only attendees and are intended to provide valuable information on new microwave products and techniques for design, manufacturing, marketing and managerial professionals. The mAPS Co-chairs, Robert O'Rourke and Dick Loewecke, have put together a good program of 37 papers in a one-track format. Ron DeLyser of the University of Denver was responsible for our Advance and Final Programs. He and Amy Norcross of Horizon House Publications developed a more compact Program offering all of the essential Microwave Week information in an easy-to-use format. Also, because many microwave professionals throughout the world now have access to the World Wide Web, we created an information-packed Web site (http://www.boulder.nist.gov/ims) with many useful links. Jeff Jargon of NIST is to be commended for an outstanding effort here.
A conference of this size and scope cannot possibly succeed without good local arrangements. Bob and Sharon Seeley of Monitor Labs Inc. have done a truly outstanding job negotiating contracts with the downtown Denver hotels in a market environment that now favors the hotels greatly. We have obtained high quality accommodations with favorable rates at hotels that are within easy walking distance of the Convention Center. For those not wishing to walk, Symposium buses will operate continuously between the Convention Center and most downtown hotels starting on Sunday. If you have not yet made your room reservations, we strongly advise you to do so immediately because many factors are coming together this June to create heavy demands on downtown hotel accommodations.
Also, we have put together an excellent Social Program. All RFIC Symposium registrants are invited to the RFIC Reception, which takes place at the Denver Marriott Hotel on Sunday evening at 7:00 pm. This year's traditional Microwave Journal/MTT-S reception takes place at the Denver Museum of Natural History starting at 6:00 pm on Monday evening. The Museum, reserved for our exclusive use, offers beautiful views of Denver and the Rockies, outstanding exhibits and an exciting IMAX film on creating "Special Effects" for modern cinema. Buses for the Museum will start loading at the Convention Center at 5:30 pm. The annual MTT-S Awards Banquet takes place in the Grand Ballroom of the Adam's Mark Hotel starting at 7:30 pm on Wednesday, preceded by the traditional industry-hosted cocktail reception at 5:45 pm. Denver's own "Four Hands, Two Grands" will provide piano entertainment at this premier event. As an innovation this year, we are hosting a complimentary breakfast for MTT-S members on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings in Ballroom 1 of the Convention Center starting at 7:00 am. If you are not yet an MTT-S member, you may be eligible to sign up at the door at no charge.
Due to its proximity to Colorado's Rocky Mountains, Denver has a well-known reputation as a major tourist center. In addition, it has recently been enjoying a renaissance in transportation, and cultural and sports activities. Most out-of-town visitors will arrive through Denver's new airport, the most advanced in the world. Guests of attendees are invited to visit the IMS Hospitality Suite in the Central City Room of the historic Brown Palace Hotel. This year's program of tours, ably organized by Robbie Marks, introduces guests to many of the new cultural attractions of Denver on Monday and Wednesday, as well as to the incomparable Rocky Mountain National Park on Tuesday and to Colorado Springs on Thursday. For a flavor of Denver's summer sports activities, don't miss out on the Rockies-Braves baseball game at 7:05 pm Tuesday evening at Coors Field in the LoDo district; tickets can be purchased during registration. But to really explore more of beautiful Colorado and its great summer resorts, plan on staying awhile either before or after Microwave Week.
Our IMS '97 Steering Committee members hope you have a productive, educational and enjoyable stay in Denver in June. We look forward to seeing you here! n Claude M. Weil was born in Newcastle-on-Tyne, UK on June 26, 1937 and emigrated to the US in 1959. He received his BSc degree from the University of Birmingham, UK; his MSE degree from the George Washington University, Washington, DC; and his PhD degree from the University of Pennsylvania (all in electrical engineering) in 1959, 1963 and 1970, respectively. Weil has devoted much of his career to microwave metrology and instrumentation. From 1960 to 1963, he worked as a civilian engineer at the Navy's Bureau of Ships in Washington, DC, where he developed RFI instrumentation and designed electronic systems for naval vessels. In 1964, he joined Radiation Systems Inc. of Alexandria, VA, where he designed microwave components and antennas. From 1971 to 1983, he was associated with the Environmental Protection Agency's research program on the health effects of RF radiation in Research Triangle Park, NC, where he developed animal exposure facilities and RF dosimetry instrumentation. From 1983 to 1985, he worked for the Boeing Military Aircraft Co. in Seattle, WA, where he performed RCS measurements on scaled target models and investigated the reflectivity of absorbing materials at mm-waves. In 1986, he joined the Electromagnetic Fields Division of the National Bureau of Standards (now NIST) in Boulder, CO, where he developed mm-wave six-port systems and power standards. Currently, he is a project leader in the NIST electromagnetics properties of materials program. Weil is a senior member of the IEEE (Microwave Theory & Techniques and the Instrumentation & Measurements Societies) and a member of Sigma-Xi. Roger B. Marks received his AB in physics in 1980 from Princeton University and his PhD in applied physics in 1988 from Yale University, which awarded him the Harding Bliss Prize for Excellence in Engineering and Applied Science. Following a postdoctoral appointment in the Netherlands, Marks joined the Electromagnetic Fields Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder, CO, where he has remained. He has investigated the electrical characterization of high speed microelectronic circuits and MMICs, developing fundamental theory and calibration methods, including the multiline TRL method. For this work, he has received the 1995 IEEE Morris E. Leeds Award and the 1994 ARFTG Automated Measurements Technology Award, as well as US Department of Commerce Bronze and Silver Medals and several best paper awards. The author of over 60 technical publications, Marks chairs the IEEE Working Group on Network Parameters and the MTT-S Standards Coordinating Committee. He founded the Wireless Communications Conference and chaired it in 1996 and 1997. He has served on the ARFTG Executive Committee as technical chair since 1994 and chairs the 49th ARFTG Conference. He has also served on numerous program committees and in professional societies. A senior member of the IEEE, Marks lives in Denver, CO with his wife, Robbie, and their children, Daniel and Amy.