The Lunch Time Panel and Evening Rump Sessions: Lively Discussion for All.
Phil Smith, IMS2009 Panel and Rump Sessions Chair
The lunch time Panel and evening rump sessions bring together experts in a particular field to engage in a lively discussion on topics of contemporary interest to the MTT community. This year's IMS will feature four lunchtime panel sessions as well as a Tuesday evening rump session.
Audience interaction and participation are strongly encouraged. Along those lines, we will be experimenting with the use of so-called "audience response systems"; this year, for the first time, enabling real time polling of audience members during the session. These “RF clickers”, now widely used on college campuses, allow audience response to multiple choice questions to be quickly collected and shown. Another first this year: awards will be given to panel session organizers who have excelled in the task at hand. One award will be made for the “Most Well-Attended Panel Session”, while a second will be given for the “Most Interesting Panel Session”, as determined through audience feedback.
The Tuesday Lunch Panel Session will focus on System-On-Chip vs. System-On-Package for emerging 3D Microsystems. At first glance, SOP and SOC might seem quite similar, since the end result is a single system. However, for a SOC device, all the components and functions are formed using a single process; for the SOP approach, various process technologies can be utilized and then integrated in a higher-level circuit. There are advantages and drawbacks to both methods, even as new technologies develop. It can be argued that one approach is superior to the other, but in reality both methods must overcome a myriad of technical and business challenges. This panel will present divergent views from various experts, discussing the trade-offs between SOC and SOP.
The Tuesday Evening Rump Session considers whether Metamaterials are a “Rich Opportunity for Discovery or an Over-Hyped Gravy Train”. In 1967 Soviet physicist Victor Veselago published a paper that explored the technical ramifications if a material with negative permittivity and/or permeability were discovered. Nearly 30 years later, British physicist John Pendry first described how traditional materials could be periodically loaded with electrically-small and closely-spaced split-ring ring resonators or parallel wires to produce an aggregate material that he claimed exhibited either macroscopic negative permeability or permittivity. Since the first seminal publications appeared, hundreds of papers and articles and several books have been written about this class of materials and their applications.
During this robust period of discovery, some serious concerns have emerged including disputes over terminology, questions about the significance or validity of some reported findings, an over-valuation of the potential impact of “metamaterial” technology at the expense of equally- or even more-promising investments in other technological advancement. Our panel of serious thinkers will objectively explore and resolve these issues. On one side, this panel includes individuals who have made important scientific and technical contributions to the field of metamaterials. On the other side, the panel includes individuals who have made important scientific and technical contributions to the field of microwave filters and networks.
Two Wednesday Lunch Panel Sessions are being held. The first is entitled “SiGe/CMOS RF-IC Phased Arrays: Will They be Used in Defense and Commercial Systems?” The purpose of this panel will be to provide an overview of the applicability of silicon technologies into new architectures, and to discuss the difference between SiGe, CMOS and III-V technologies for these applications. Whereas phased arrays were once confined to the military and space domain, phased-arrays are now pervading other domains such as security and communication systems. This is driven by strong technological progress, cost reduction and a mature understanding of the technology’s possibilities and limitations. This wider usage requires further introduction of low-cost technology, and the introduction of SiGe or CMOS technologies currently give rise to considerable debate
The second Wednesday Lunch panel session examines whether enabling Multi-Gigabit Wireless Communication Links offers a communication system that is “Faster than Fiber:” Wireless links offering Gigabit-per-second transmission speeds offer great potential as a valid alternative to wired broadband communications, providing fiber-like speeds but at a fraction of the cost to install, commission and maintain. Blasting beams of high speed data through free space is not new. Terahertz spectrum near visible light has been used for Gbps Free Space Optics for many years. Newly released mm-wave bands at 60, 75, 85 and 94 GHz have sufficient bandwidth to permit similar ultra-high data rate radio transmissions. Novel use of the widely-used microwave bands has also allowed support of higher data rate communications. Each of these technologies has strengths and weaknesses, adding to their effectiveness, adoption and failure under different operating circumstances. Nevertheless, systems are being developed that outpace traditional wireless data delivery used for most wireless networks. This panel session will explore the technologies being developed within industry to enable this new field of communications, bringing together leading device engineers with system providers to provide a complete overview of Gbps communication state-of-the-art and the roadmap for the future.
The Thursday Lunch Panel Session is entitled “A Return to the Classic Heterodyne Architecture for Integrated Transceivers”. Due to the inability to realize an integrated IF filter on an RFIC, wireless transceivers have, over the past 15 years, generally adopted a zero-IF architecture. Zero-IF architectures avoid the need for an IF filter, but come with several undesirable features, such as DC offset (due to IP2), high 1/f noise levels, and large A/D dynamic range and bandwidth. Recently, new technologies have emerged that can allow high performance IF filters to be realized on-chip. These advancements, in turn, can allow a return to the classic heterodyne architecture, with all of its advantages: adjacent channel blocking, high linearity, low noise, relaxed ADC dynamic range and bandwidth (reduced power consumption), and relaxed digital filtering (reduced latency). On the other hand, the zero-IF architecture is now mature, and presents a significant barrier to a return to the classic heterodyne system. The session will present opposing views on the viability of on-chip IF filters in volume production, and on the necessity (real or perceived) for such filters in standard applications.
All panel and rump sessions promise to be enlightening and full of lively discussion, and are open to all without any prior registration. We encourage conference attendees to grab a box lunch (or eat early) and come ready to ask questions of the panelists and other attendees. The panel and rump sessions have always been one of the most interactive portions of the entire symposium, and with the new “RF clickers” in place we hope to further expand this exchange, putting wireless technology into practice as we enable a larger portion of the audience to weigh in with their opinions.