Robert L. Schmid
The 24th IEEE Topical Meeting on Silicon Monolithic Integrated Circuits in RF Systems (SiRF) is excited to return to San Antonio, Texas on 21–24 January 2024. For more than a decade now, SiRF has benefited from combining with four other subconferences at the IEEE Radio & Wireless Week (RWW). Along with SiRF, RWW 2024 will include the IEEE Radio and Wireless Symposium (RWS), IEEE Topical Conference on RF/Microwave Power Amplifiers for Wireless and Radio Applications (PAWR), IEEE Topical Conference on Wireless Sensors and Sensor Networks (WISNET), and IEEE Space Hardware and Radio Conference (SHaRC). We once again look forward to engaging in synergistic dialog across the domain knowledge found at these subconferences.
For those new to SiRF, I want to highlight the many benefits of this unique conference and encourage you to consider joining us in January. SiRF excels at coordinating interesting invited talks from world-class experts from both industry and academia and inserts these invited talks within the excellent technical sessions. Not only are the presentations at SiRF and RWW of high quality, but the conference is smaller than many other IEEE conferences, which allows for exceptional access to experts and strong networking opportunities (see Figure 1). At SiRF and RWW, if you hear an interesting presentation and want to engage the speaker in follow-on discussions, you will have the chance to find the presenter later at the conference, meet, and talk further.
Figure 1. A hands-on workshop enabled attendees to experiment with mm-wave radar systems.
For those more familiar with SiRF, many will remember that RWW was also held in San Antonio in 2020. San Antonio has interesting history, excellent weather in January, and a lively River Walk area with great food and activities (see Figure 2). SiRF continues to be an excellent venue to report on advances using silicon technology. Historically, the conference has focused on underlying silicon device technology and modeling, fundamental RF circuit building blocks, and the inevitable intersection of devices and circuits. In recent years, the conference has grown its portfolio to include complex RF system designs on silicon, where an understanding of the system application, such as communications, radar, and other sensing modalities, becomes paramount to the circuit design itself.
Figure 2. The historic Alamo Mission is a quick 10 min walk from the conference location.
The continued global growth in high-bandwidth communications and precision automotive radar motivates new techniques in millimeter-wave systems as well as high-speed data converters and advanced device technologies. Millimeter-wave (mm-wave) and terahertz systems require design approaches that tightly co-design high-performance devices, circuit topologies, and, in some cases, on-chip or superstrate antennas. Advances in silicon photonics have also generated new opportunities to create highly integrated electronic–photonic circuits and systems. In many high-frequency applications, the interconnects can be as important as the circuit design itself. As a result, simulation and modeling of packaging and considerations for heterogeneous integration are growing in importance. SiRF 2024 will provide an opportunity to announce breakthroughs and new techniques related to the current state of the art in these areas and more as well as exchange dialog on the challenges that must be addressed in the future.
The SiRF Steering Committee has been busy organizing this year’s list of invited speakers. As of September 2023, the invited speakers and topics areas include the following:
SiRF promises to promote great dialog and connect researchers in academia and industry. We highly encourage professionals in related fields to visit https://www.radiowirelessweek.org/conferences/sirf/ for the latest details on the SiRF technical sessions and invited speakers. We hope to see as many of you as possible in San Antonio!
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MMM.2023.3314022