Microwave Engineering December/January 1999 Cover story Our cover shows a close-up view of NTT's latest work on 350GHz HEMTs. It is featured in our IEDM conference report. Meetings and minds For our end of year issue we can look back at 1998 as another year of tremendous change for our industry and look forward to celebrating our tenth anniversary in May 1999. The articles in this issue certainly reflect that change. In our report on the IEDM conference it's clear just how much mainstream semiconductor development is aimed at improving RF devices, particularly silicon devices. Our cover shot features a GaAs-InP HEMT which has pushed the limits for three terminal devices further up in frequency, but elsewhere at the conference RF devices on silicon were far more dominant. Passive structures, particularly using micro-electro mechanical systems, were clearly in evidence and so too were discussions on interconnection. Unfortunately, one of those proposed discussions fell victim to a city-wide power cut, a nightmare for the conference organisers and delegates alike. One month earlier, the GaAs IC Symposium staged a curious lunchtime discussion meeting, to discuss whether silicon now owns the communications market and, strangely enough, didn't get anyone from the silicon community to come along. That symposium served to emphasise differences between the European activities in compound semiconductors with those in Asia and the USA. In Europe, the published work on new devices, circuits and packages appears to be dominated by cellular telephones, as it does in Japan too, but the papers at the GaAs IC Symposium looking at the new driving issues such as packaging, often credit funding from the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency, DARPA. Whether defence money focuses the development as clearly as an impending commercial need, only time will tell us. The pressures of serving the cellular industry, at least in products for handsets, are intense. Consumer products are expected to reduce in price and increase in capability over time, and typically over a very short time, perhaps just 6 months. Anadigics announced this month that it was taking action to deal with the problem, based on "new strategic initiatives including the implementation of several initiatives designed to lower manufacturing costs and streamline operations." The result is that the company plans to accelerate the qualification of it's 6 inch wafer fabrication facility and subsequently close it's current 4 inch wafer fabrication facility. Anadigics plans to bring it on-line during the third quarter of 1999 as a 6 inch wafer fabrication facility within three to six months of the start of production. Other changes include closure of the in-house low volume, engineering assembly operations. That harsh reality of dealing with price and consumer pressure means that Anadigics' manufacturing workforce will be cut by approximately 60 people, most of them over the next month. Dr. Bami Bastani, President and Chief Executive Officer of Anadigics, described the moves as "decisive actions to streamline operations" and "positioning Anadigics to return to profitability." After the days of focusing on one key customer, Ericsson in Anadigics case, there is also a declared intention to expanding the customer base to reduce revenue volatility. Returns from consumer products can be exceptionally good but, as the announcement from Anadigics serves to illustrate, it is a dynamic sector. A nice piece of news came our way this week when we agreed, in principle, to co-locate our annual Mobile Communications Workshop with the popular and long-running Automated RF and Microwave Measurement Society's (ARMMS) late April meeting. It's going to be a busy week, with the Workshops visiting Kista, Sweden on April 20th and then joining with the ARMMS meeting just outside London a few days later. As the name suggests, the ARMMS meeting is test focused, papers are being actively solicited by the programme chair, Yiannis Vardaxoglou of Loughborough University (j.c.vardaxoglou@lboro.ac.uk). Further details of the Mobile Communications Workshop are available from Nicola Jedrej at Microwave Engineering On Line (n.jedrej@cmp-europe.com). We're certainly looking forward to the get together! Paul Jackson

Contents In focus Prestige devices shown in the dark; Electronica moves on packages and W-CDMA; GaAs papers reflect a diverging industry; Tester shapes up to cross-standard future. Focus on Sources and amplifiers TWTs take off for satellite bands; Amplifiers combine for redundant operation; Sources specialise for test simplicity. Direct Digital Frequency Synthesizers (DDS) in microwaves The Direct Digital synthesizer provides a flexible route to generating signals up to 500MHz. In this paper, Veceslav F. Kroupa, author of a new book on DDS, updates us on the use of DDS-based frequency generators at microwave frequencies. A NLTL-based Integrated Circuit for a 70 - 200GHz VNA system With more applications set for the millimetric bands, S-parmeter test above 70GHz is certainly going to be in more demand, a fact recognised when the 1998 European Microwave Conference Prize was awarded to this paper by O. Wohlgemuth, B. Agarwal, R. Pullela, D. Mensa, Q. Lee, J. Guthrie, M. J. W. Rodwell, R.Reuter, J. Braunstein, M. Schlechtweg, T. Krems, and K. Köhler. Evaluation of reconfigurable antennas for communications satellites Multiple operation alternatives with reconfigurable scenarios may be offered to satellite customers and end users. The purpose of this paper by Mariá Jesús Martîn Jiménez of CASA, Space Division, Madrid and Leandro de Haro Ariet of University of Madrid, Spain, is to envisage a rationale to evaluate the applicability of the reconfigurable architecture to replace the fixed one. The method has shown high figure of merit of such systems in most of the scenarios studied. Sommaire d' articles Zusammenfassung der Artikel New Products and Data Calendar Classified Catalogue Update & Appointments