I have recently returned from Shanghai and Beijing where I met with Microwave Journal China contributors and advertisers as well as perspective participants in next year’s EDI CON, including members of various Chinese research institutes, academics and the in-country teams that will help us organize travel and accommodations for this new event. Coinciding with the deadline for our initial Call for Papers on August 31st, I am very pleased with the progress of both the technical program and the exhibition. As you know, we are creating an industry developed technical program, so the exhibitor participation plays a greater role in EDI CON than in many other shows our readers may be familiar with. This is why it is important for the organizers to be talking to prospective exhibitors and sponsors as part of the conference program development.

The technical program has evolved as follows:

The morning will now consist of four tracks. These include the original – Design, Measurement/Modeling and System Engineering tracks. We have added a commercial resource track to accommodate sponsored papers. These papers will not be the responsibility of the Technical Advisory Committee, which will only be responsible for soliciting and reviewing papers for the three main tracks.

The afternoon of the first day will be all sponsored workshops. Gold and platinum sponsors have reserved workshops (Agilent and R&S have two each), these are 45 minute long sessions. Additional workshops may be co-sponsored or solely sponsored. On the first afternoon we will be organizing a sponsored GaN Panel.

On the second afternoon, we are also offering panel sessions, these will last one hour and are for three panelists to present on a common topic (15 mins. each) and then hold a joint 15 min. Q&A session. Spirent Communications has signed on as a major sponsor of the EDI CON technical program with an hour long panel session on “The Changing Face of Testing: Moving from Conducted to OTA”.  This panel will include key industry players and OTA testing for both Multiple-In, Multiple-Out (MIMO) antenna systems and Assisted Global Navigation Satellite Systems (A-GNSS).  Spirent will also be presenting a workshop on MIMO in all its forms including TD-LTE and a technical paper on MIMO OTA testing methodologies.

We have a number of vendors looking at sponsoring specific workshops and panel. As a result, we anticipate included the following specific workshops and panels into the program –

1. We are proposing a “Connectivity Forum” to provide a platform for a dozen cable and connector vendors discussing topics such as instrument grade and/or space qualified cables/connectors, phase stability vs. temperature, PIM, etc.
2. We have requests from two potential sponsors for additional workshops on MIMO and channel emulation.
3. We are organizing a workshop on Load-pull or non-linear device characterization depending on the preference of the two sponsors.
4. We will be organizing a panel on GaAs device design or foundry related topics depending on the preference of the three sponsors.
5. We are organizing workshops on MMIC design and RF Front end Modules

New Sponsors

The following companies are confirmed participants in EDI CON and will be helping develop workshop themes and sponsored talks in the commercial resources track:

Win Semiconductor, OMMIC, National Instruments (sharing Gold sponsorship with AWR), Rogers Corporation, Maury Microwave, LPKF, Peregrine, Sanetronic, CETC 41 and Tektronix.

Collaborations/Academia/Research Institutes

We have met with several organizations within China such as ASTRI, CASIC and SICA (Shanghai Integrated Circuit Association) and Tsinghua University professors for their cooperation with the conference and we look forward to having members of these organizations serve as guest speakers and moderators. I invite our TAC members to recommend additional dignitaries from the technical community to participate in our conference. We especially would like to include high level managers from both government institutions and commercial companies. Please contact me or our staff in China for further information, support.

Paper Themes received so far:

Design Track - sub topics include:

RF PA design

Oscillators and sources

Antennas

Receiver

Passive components

High Speed

Measurement/modeling - sub topics include:

                Noise Measurements

                Active Device Meas/modeling

                Passive models

                EM Simulated models

                VNA Measurement Techniques

                Time/mixed domain measurement techniques

                System measurement/verification

                MIMO OTA

                EMC/EMI

System engineering - sub topics include:

                Communications

                Spectrum Monitoring and re-use

                Radar Systems

                Phased Array Antennas

                High Speed

                EMC/EMI

With the successful response to the first call for papers, the technical program organizers have decided to allow additional paper proposals to be submitted through October 15^th, for a second and final opportunity to propose a 20 minute talk in the technical session. In addition, the technical advisory committee will be soliciting additional industry experts and members of the research community to submit paper proposals to cover the areas which will benefit the program best and be of most interest to our target audience.

The three technical tracks are comprised of 40 minute sessions based on topics chosen by the technical advisory committee from among the submitted proposals.  From the early response, the following sessions are possible candidates for individual sessions:

Design Track (8 total) – 2 PA sessions, 1 VCO/Sources session, 1 Antenna session, 1 Passive component session, 1 receiver session, 2 high speed sessions.

Measurement/modeling Track (8 total) – 1 Noise session, 1 active device modeling session, 2 EM modeling sessions, 1 VNA session, 1 Time/mixed domain measurement session, 1 system measurement, 1 EMC/EMI. (Note - we may need to move the MIMO papers to a workshop in the afternoon to accommodate them)

System Engineer (8 total) – LTE TDD Tri-band Receivers, 802.11 ac, Carrier Aggregation Performance Testing, Wideband systems, Spectrum monitoring/re-use, High Speed SerDes Interconnects, EMI System-level Susceptibility