Texas is known for doing things on a grand scale, so it's fitting that this year's annual IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S) convention be showcased at the Fort Worth Convention Center, June 6-11. Known formally as the International Microwave Symposium 2004 (IMS 2004), the convention also hosts the Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits (RFIC) Symposium and the Automatic RF Techniques Group (ARFTG) Conference, making it the premier technical gathering in the world for RF and microwave engineers. During what its organizers call “Microwave Week,” up to 10,000 technical presenters, exhibitors and attendees will explore every aspect of the state-of-the art in microwave technology.

More than 450 companies will exhibit the latest in hardware, software and instruments for the microwave industry. This year's theme is “Microwave Frontiers,” and much is happening on the frontiers in areas such as ultra wideband, optical fiber, wireless LANs, fourth generation cellular and Terahertz technology. More than 360 presentations will be offered in 62 IMS technical sessions, and that doesn't include the workshops, tutorials, panel sessions, plenary sessions and interactive forums. The Special and Focus sessions will spotlight evolving areas of the technology with presentations such as “Microwave Generation by Optical Techniques,” “Ultra High Power Microwave Systems and Components” and THz Technology and Biology.”

One of the panel sessions will tackle the question, “Ultra Wideband: An Academic Exercise or a Practical Path to Higher Data Rates?” A panel of experts will try to determine whether a standard can be created for UWB, and if so, what markets and applications the technology will address. A number of technical barriers to the successful deployment of a front-end UWB system exist, but before designers spend time investigating them, they must determine how UWB will fare when going up against more established standards such as IEEE 802.11 and the USB Interactive Forum.

Optics is the focus of a workshop entitled, “Signal Processing Receivers for Optical Fiber Communications.” New techniques for reducing noise will be covered, such as using electronic signal processing to replace the older, specialized optics to correct for signal distortions. The electronic approaches are expected to offer better cost-effectiveness and operational flexibility.

With homeland security as a top government priority and a major public concern, a panel session on “Terahertz Technology Implications to Biological Sensing and Defense” presents a novel application of the technology. Government research programs have been looking into the THz or sub-millimeter wave part of the spectrum for solutions to critical problem areas. One area of interest is the use of fundamental interactions of THz radiation at the molecular level for sensing and characterizing chemical and biological (CB) systems. New developments could be useful in CB defense, biomedical and molecular science. A potential application is the remote sensing of Anthrax.

Designers who wish to understand the technology that underlies many commercial products can listen to and speak with company representatives who explain the inner workings of their products at the Microwave Application & Product Seminars or mAPS. In the Active Component seminar, representatives will provide the details of power amplifiers for broadband Internet access, frequency conversion products in SiGe technology, the optoelectonic oscillator, ultra low-noise SiGe transistors, direct quadrature modulators and a host of others.

Tutorials, workshops and a plenary session are on tap at the RFIC Symposium, which focuses on RF integrated circuit design and innovations. Three speakers will share their views on the future direction of the wireless industry, looking at the convergence of WLANs and 4G cellular. The technical program includes 22 sessions and 110 papers.

Designers whose work or interests lie in test and measurement can find a wealth of information at the 63^rd ARFTG Microwave Measurements Conference. This year's theme is “On-Wafer Characterization,” with papers covering measurements for RF and satellite communications systems, measurements up to 70 GHz, vector network analysis, traceability to national standards and many more. Experts will be on hand to discuss any test and measurement topic from high-throughput production testing to individual measurements on complex systems and simple circuits.

Whether you are a novice designer or have been in the microwave field for many years, IMS 2004, RFIC and ARFTG has a tutorial, workshop, panel session or technical presentation that will give you insights into the future of the industry or help you solve a current design problem. For complete information on the symposium, visit www.ims2004.org.

Exhibitor Descriptions

Acqiris USA

Acqiris USA has released two multifunctional signal analyzer boards. The AP240 and AP235 feature an analyzer platform hosting a reconfigurable onboard digital processing unit and an averaging firmware option performing synchronous dual-channel real-time averaging at 1 GS/s. They are ideal for I/Q-related measurement where two signals need to be sampled and analyzed simultaneously with minimal phase error, and random noise must be removed from signals that are being acquired with very high event rates.
www.acqiris.com

Boonton Electronics

Booth 818

Boonton is a trusted leader in high-performance test instrumentation and sensors dedicated to measuring the power of RF and microwave systems in both military and commercial applications such as cellular and WLAN.
www.boonton.com

California Eastern Laboratories

Booth 829

NEC is positioning itself to be a major player in the RFIC switch market. With its ultraminiature packages, NEC switches have always been popular with engineers tasked with reducing the size of their products. Now NEC is offering switches that are drop-in, high performance replacements for existing devices. For more information and a Product Selection Guide, drop by California Eastern Lab's booth.
www.cel.com

Couger Components Corp.

Booth 1901

Visit Cougar Components Corp. at booth 1901. Cougar will be displaying new products to 20 GHz, including cascadable amplifiers, mixers, VCOs, detectors, and integrated assemblies, including IQ demodulators, switched limiting amps, amp-oscillator subassemblies and more.
www.cougarcorp.com

CYTEC Corporation

CYTEC Corporation's CXM series of Microwave Switching Systems are computer-controlled units designed to switch 50-Ohm coaxial microwave signals. These are passive bidirectional Nx1 multiplexers and NxM non-blocking matrices. Bandpass is typically DC to 18 GHz. Control options include RS-232, IEEE488, LAN Ethernet and optional manual control.
www.cytec-ate.com

Eagleware Corporation

Booth 937

Eagleware Corp. has shipped GENESYS 2004. This latest release of its suite of design software products includes new features such as synthesis topologies for filters and oscillators, updated LDMOS models, RF architecture simulation enhancements, and integrated component libraries. In addition, the core design environment has been enhanced with enterprise-level features, including an XML library manager, Visual Basic scripting, rich text editing, graph annotations, an Agilent ADS interface, and enhanced language support of Simplified Chinese.
www.eagleware.com

Emerson & Cuming Microwave Products Inc.

Booth 2219

Emerson & Cuming Microwave Products Inc. has introduced a low loss dielectric, rigid, syntactic foam material to its ECCOSTOCK® line. ECCOSTOCK® CK is a lightweight controlled dielectric material available with dielectric constants from 1.7 to 15. The material is lightweight, moldable, and machineable, lending itself to complex configurations. Online ordering is available for select products on the e-commerce web site.
www.eccosorb.com

Engineered Endeavors Inc.

Engineered Endeavors Inc. (Owned by Emerson Electric, NYSE: EMR) is recognized as the leader in disguising antenna structures, has introduced its ClearPathâ Technologies, which provides solutions for the concealment of antennas and the structures that support them through the understanding of material characteristics and by employing certain design techniques when disguising antennas.
www.engend.com

Harris Corporation

Sierra II from Harris consists of a miniaturized printed wiring assembly, custom application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) and supporting software that is embedded in radios and other voice and data communications equipment to encrypt classified information prior to transmission and storage. Sierra's small size, low power and high data rates make it ideal for battery-powered applications.
www.rfcomm.harris.com

Hittite Microwave Corporation

Booth 841

Hittite Microwave Corporation has announced the 10 W GaAs PHEMT transmit/receive MMIC switch for infrastructure and handheld/portable applications including cellular/PCS/3G, mobile radio, automotive telematics and test equipment. The HMC484MS8G is a low-cost SPDT switch for use in T/R applications from DC to 3 GHz, where very low distortion of >+70 dBm IIP3 is required at input signal levels as high as 10 W (+40 dBm). It is packaged in an ultra-small MSOP8G 8 lead SMT package occupying 14.9 square mm.
www.hittite.com

Interactive Circuits and Systems Ltd.

ICS software radio PMC modules (ICS-554, ICS-564 and ICS-572) lead the industry in terms of channel density, bandwidth handling capability and performance for Nyquist and undersampling applications. To offer convenience and a single slot solution for many complex applications, ICS software radio blade products combine these PMC modules with bulk memory, DSP or additional FPGA resources in PCI, VME or compact PCI form factor.
www.ics-ltd.com

Microlab/FXR

Booth 818

Microlab/FXR designs and manufactures passive RF/microwave components for filtering, diplexing, dividing, coupling and routing of RF signals for a variety of military and commercial applications. Microlab's airline technology offers high-power, low-loss and superior PIM results for performance-critical requirements.
www.microlab.fxr.com

Mini-Circuits

Booth 319

This super broadband termination covers virtually all your SMA termination needs within the DC-20 GHz band with a >30 dB return loss typical over most of the range. Repeatable and high performance features such as flat response and excellent VSWR make these high-quality 50-Ohm 1 W terminations an exceptional value. From $13.95 each (qty. 1-9).
www.minicircuits.com/ANNE-50X.pdf

MITEQ

Booth 1920

MITEQ designs and manufactures state-of-the-art microwave components and satellite communications earth station equipment. Products include UHF to millimeter wave low-noise and medium power amplifiers, mixers, multipliers, switches, frequency sources, IF signal processing equipment, integrated microwave sub-systems, satellite up/downconverters and modems. Emphasis is on high-performance, custom engineering driven applications.
www.miteq.com

Noise Com

Booth 818

Noise Com is a leading provider of RF and microwave-based noise test and measurement solutions for noise figure measurement and bit-error analysis.
www.noisecom.com

State of the Art Inc.

Booth 1001

State of the Art (SOTA) Inc., a leading manufacture of military and high reliability chip resistors has introduced a line of high reliability, high-power chip resistors using thin film on Aluminum Nitride. These compact, lightweight, high-power designs are ideal for high current pulse applications such as power supplies, and are suitable as microwave terminations. The components have a maximum power rating five times higher than conventional chip resistors. Made in the USA.
www.resistor.com

Valpey Fisher Corporation

Booth 413

Valpey Fisher Corporation specializes in designing, manufacturing, and marketing a range of frequency control products. Our expertise lies in high-performance crystal oscillators, VCXOs and OCXOs. The product lines provide a broad spectrum of standard models, as well as a full line of advanced custom designs. The company also offers a full line of Hi-Reliability and COTS products offering a range of custom options and are all processed and screened to meet military requirements.
www.valpeyfisher.com

Winchester Electronics

Booth 165

Winchester Electronics manufactures electronic connector products including backplane connector systems, RF coaxial, input/output (I/O), and power connectors, as well as value-added products such as cable assemblies, electromechanical assemblies, and upper-level box builds. Winchester's connectors are used by OEMs and CEMs in the telecommunications, wireless, computer, military/aerospace, industrial and medical instrumentation industries.
www.winchesterelectronics.com

WJ Communications Inc.

Booth 2135

WJ Communications Inc. is a leading RF semiconductor company focusing on the design and manufacture of high-quality devices, chipsets and multichip modules (MCMs) for telecommunications, RF identification (RFID) and homeland security systems worldwide. WJ's amplifiers, mixers, RF integrated circuits (RFICs), RFID reader modules, chipsets and MCM products are used to transmit, receive and process signals that enable current and next-generation wireless and wireline services.
www.wj.com

For more information go to www.ims2004.org