Honolulu, Hawaii is almost synonymous with the terms "vacation" and "rest and relaxation." But for one week in June, it will be the place where thousands of microwave engineers come to work, learn, and perhaps sneak off to one of those sandy beaches for a short break. For on June 3-8, 2007, Honolulu is the site of the 2007 International Microwave Symposium (IMS 2007). Sponsored by the Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S) of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), it is the largest annual gathering of RF and microwave engineers and is part of a Microwave Week that also includes the Radio-Frequency Integrated Circuit (RFIC) Symposium and the 69th running of the Automatic RF Techniques Group (ARFTG) Conference.

The conference features diverse technical presentations from both industry and leading educational institutions from around the world. The event will draw from the IEEE, with more than 367,000 members (including 73,000 student members) in more than 130 countries worldwide, and the MTT-S, with more than 9000 members and 80 chapters worldwide. This marks the first time that the IEEE MTTS conference (www.ims2007.org) will not be held on the North American continent. In addition to the conference, the MTT-S Exhibition, with more than 400 companies showing their latest products and technologies, will be open from Tuesday, June 5th through Thursday, June 7th. Scheduled for the Hawaii Convention Center, the 2007 MTT-S Symposium and Exhibition is actually one of three IEEE events to be held in Hawaii this year, along with the IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation (June 1015, 2007) and the IEEE International Symposium on Electromagnetic Compatibility (July 8-13, 2007).

The 2007 IEEE MTT-S IMS features workshops and plenary sessions on Sunday, June 3rd, and Monday, June 4th, followed by RFIC and IMS technical sessions on Tuesday, June 5th, through Thursday, June 7th. Plenary Sessions include "The Future of Mobile Broadband" by Anil Kripalani, senior vice president for Global Technology Affairs, QUALCOMM, Inc. (San Diego, CA) and "The Next Direction of Advanced Wireless Communication Technology—Medical ICT!" by Dr. Ryuji Kohno, professor and director, Center of Medical Information and Communication Technology, Yokohama National University (Yokohama, Japan). The former addresses emerging wireless communications technologies, such as CDMA2000, WCDMA/HSPA, OFDMA/UMB, and LTE. It also reviews how WiMAX is expected to perform in comparison with other wireless-wide-area-network (WWAN) technologies. The latter explains how info-communication technology (ICT), which is based on UWB, SDR, MIMO, and other wireless technologies, can be used to address the serious medical problems of an aging population. Dr. Kohno will report how ICT is currently being used to innovate Japan's medical/health-care system.

Workshops and Short Courses are held on Sunday, June 3rd, and Monday, June 4th, and cover a wide range of topics. They include "Wireless Reconfigurable Terminals: Adaptive Analog Circuits or Digital RF Processing?" "Nanoscale RFIC Design Challenges and Foundry Solutions," "System-In-Package Technologies for Cost, Size, and Performance," "Optimum CMOS Integrated LNA Design Techniques for Handsets," "Advances in WiMAX RF Technology," "Solid-State Power Invades the Tube Realm," "UWB Radio: From Building Block to SoC," "Advances in Mixer Design for UWB Transceivers," "Emerging RFID and Wireless Sensors: Technologies and Applications," "Software-Defined Radio to Cognitive Radio," "24-GHz ISM-Band Communications," "Integrated Broadband Tuners for Satellite and Terrestrial Applications," "RFIC Circuit and System Design Tutorial," "Analog and High-Speed Circuit Design Solutions for Nano RF CMOS," and "SDR and Cognitive Radio—The Need for Reconfigurable RF Front-Ends." In addition, attendees can learn about Europe's first satellite-navigation system, at present in the in-orbit validation phase in "Galileo—Europe's Share for a Global Navigation Satellite Service." They also can discover how rectangular coaxial lines (RCLs) built using surface micromachining techniques can serve millimeter-wave applications in "Micro Coaxial Lines."

The MTT-S technical sessions on Tuesday, June 5, include Advances in RF Power Amplifier Technology, several sessions on Hybrids and Couplers, Microwave Photonic Links, Digital Microwave Architectures (with several papers on delta-sigma modulators and digitizers), Advances in CAD Techniques (with several papers focused on EM optimization techniques), Advanced Techniques for Wireless Power Amplifier Efficiency and Linearity Enhancement, Multi-GHz Circuits and Systems for Communication and Instrumentation, Microwave Photonic Devices, Advanced Components for Wireless Systems (including several broadband antennas and front-end modules), and Applied Frequency Domain Techniques. Several Special Sessions are being held that day, including "A Tribute to Dr. Leo Young," who was a pioneer in microwave filter design and, along with George Matthaei and E.M.T. Jones, author of Microwave Filters, Impedance Matching Networks, and Coupling Structures, considered by many the definitive text on microwave filter design. Another Special Session explores "Microwave/Millimeter-Wave Activities in the Pacific Rim" (with focuses on Japan and Taiwan).

The MTT-S technical sessions on Wednesday, June 6th, feature Power Characteristics and Performance Enhancement Techniques for II-V and Silicon Based Devices and Innovative Active Circuits Operating above 100 GHz [including a monolithic SiGe 278-GHz push-pull oscillator, H-band low-noise-amplifier ICs, high-temperature-superconductor (HTC) hot-electron bolometer technology for terahertz detection, push-pull oscillators operating to 287 GHz, and a 100-GHz tunable photonic millimeter-wave synthesizer for the Atacama Large Millimeter Array Radiotelescope]. Also featured are Microwave Sensors for Object and Presence Detection (including a 24-GHz intruder-detection radar and a Ka-band correlation radiometer for human presence detection from a moving platform), Power Dividers and Combiners, Transmission Line Elements, Passive Circuit Elements, Active and Integrated Filters, HF/VHF/UHF Technologies and Applications, Power-Amplifier Devices and Integrated Circuits, High-Power Amplifiers, Low-Noise CMOS and Low-Power HEMT Technologies, Modules and Chipsets for Millimeter-Wave Commercial Applications (including several modules for line-of-sight links and 77-GHz automotive radar systems), RF MEMS Tunable Circuits, Design and Synthesis of Planar Filters, Sensor and Sensor Systems, and Nonlinear Transistor Modeling.

Special Sessions that day include "A Tribute to K.C. Gupta." Dr. Gupta, who passed away in February, was a teacher, author of numerous microwave textbooks, and IEEE MTT-S President in 2005, but perhaps best known as the founding editor of the International Journal of RF and Microwave Computer-Aided Engineering. Focused Sessions include Advances in GaN Technology, Microwaves in Support of Societal Security (including presentations on radar-based concealed threat detectors, security imaging technologies, and through-the-wall radar life-detection and monitoring techniques), Advances in Microwave Systems for Deep-Space Missions, and Nonlinear Circuit Analysis and System Simulation. In addition, Wednesday Panel Sessions cover two favorite topics: "Is GaN Ready for Prime Time?" and "Will RFMEMS Make the Commercial Leap?"

Additional Wednesday MTT-S Sessions include Advances in Microwave and Millimeter-Wave VCOs (including several low-noise VCOs from the renowned German Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid-State Physics), Ferrite and Ferroelectric Components, Accuracy Evaluation and Enhancement in Time-Domain Electromagnetic Modeling, Wideband Planar Filters, Millimeter-Wave and Terahertz Components and Technologies (including integrated 585-GHz hot-electron mixers and a pulsed terahertz imaging system with 1-mm spatial resolution), Smart Antennas, Spatial Power Combining, and Phased Arrays, Radars and Broadband Communications Systems, Wireless and Cellular Communications Systems, Sensors and Sensor Systems, X-Band and Millimeter-Wave Devices and Power Amplifiers, Novel SignalGeneration Techniques and Applications, SAW and FBAR RF Filters and Modules, Problems of Scale and Hybrid Modeling in Time-Domain Electromagnetics, and Planar Dual-Mode and Dual Bandpass Filters.

Of special interest on Wednesday is the Third Student High-Efficiency-Amplifier Design Competition. It is open to all students registered at an educational institution. Competitors are required to design a high-efficiency power amplifier above 1 GHz and less than 20 GHz and having an output power level of at least 5 W but less than 100 W into a 50Ω load. The winner will be judged in terms of achieving the highest power-added efficiency (PAE). The winner will receive a $1000 prize and will be invited to submit a paper describing the design to the IEEE Microwave Magazine.

Panel Session: "Your GaAs Foundry and the Future: Anyone Have Issues? Of Course!" This session invites attendees to ask several leading GaAs foundries how they plan to solve your problems and how they will address key issues facing GaAs foundries and their customers today and in the future.