Amelie Hagelauer, Holger Maune
After being postponed for two years, the inaugural edition of the IEEE Microwave Theory and Technology Society (MTT-S) International Conference on Microwave Acoustics & Mechanics (IC-MAM) was held from 18 to 20 July 2022 in the Training Center of Rohde & Schwarz in Munich, Germany. It was financially sponsored by the IEEE MTT-S (Figure 1) and technically cosponsored by the European Microwave Association.
The conference represented a unique and unprecedented opportunity to bring together researchers and practitioners from all around the globe to discuss the latest results in the following topics:
The technical sessions, with a strong focus on systems and applications, filters and resonators, nonlinearities, simulation, and modeling, were accompanied by two focused sessions on advanced surface acoustic wave (SAW) technology as well as nonlinearities and modeling. The program was rounded off by five keynote talks given by highly recognized experts from industry and academia. They were as follows:
A highlight of the sessions was a panel discussion organized by Andreas Tag (Qorvo, Munich, Germany) on the perspectives of microwave acoustics in the upcoming generations of mobile communications (see Figure 2). The panel of well-known experts from the United States, Asia, and Europe discussed questions such as, “What requirements do we expect for RF acoustics in the remaining portion of 5G and the upcoming 6G?” and “What trends do we expect in front-end architectures and systems?” We thank the following panelists for a great discussion.
Figure 1. 2022 MTT-S President Rashaunda Henderson and 2014 MTT-S-President Robert Weigel pay a visit to the event.
Figure 2. The panel discussion on the future of microwave acoustics.
All papers submitted to the conference were thoroughly reviewed by the Technical Program Committee, which represented a diverse international group from academia and industry. For the first IC-MAM, 38 papers were submitted from 10 countries, and 32 were accepted. Among those were 17 student papers. The authors were almost evenly distributed from around the world; the United States, Japan, and China contributed roughly 20% each, and 30% came from the European Union (see Figure 3). Among the accepted papers, 20% were submitted by authors from industry.
Figure 3. The authors at IC-MAM by country.
The accepted papers were scheduled in six technical sessions in a single-track configuration over two-and-a-half days. The accepted papers were published in the proceedings, which were available to the participants via a download site. They were also made available for archiving on IEEE Xplore at 10.1109/IC-MAM55200.2022.
The student papers were entered into the best paper competition. Congratulations to Jack P. Kramer et al. for the paper “Acoustic Wave Focusing Lens at Radio Frequencies in Thin-Film Lithium Niobate” [1] (see Figure 4) and Naoki Ishii et al. for the paper “Mechanical Transmission Loss of the Sole Bragg Reflector by GHz Pulse Echo Technique With Thick SiO2 Delay Line” [2] for the first- and second-prize IC-MAM student papers, respectively.
Figure 4. Jack P. Kramer receives the Best Student Paper Award for his work “Acoustic Wave Focusing Lens at Radio Frequencies in Thin-Film Lithium Niobate” from (left) Awards Chair Gianluca Piazza and (right) General Chair Amelie Hagelauer.
The COVID-19 pandemic and international travel bans/restrictions made it very difficult to plan for an inaugural edition of a new conference. Our initial, pre-COVID projected attendance was a maximum of 80 attendees. In the wake of the pandemic, we reduced our expectations to 60 participants. In the end, 100 people from all around the world attended the conference. This shows how important meetings and conferences are for the exchange of knowledge. Even though 40% of the attendees were from Germany, the international participation was a great success (see Figure 5). Roughly 10% of the registrants were unable to attend the conference in person due to travel restrictions or active COVID-19 infections. For them, we provided the option of virtually attending the technical sessions.
Figure 5. The attendees of IC-MAM by country.
Two networking opportunities were offered this year. On Monday evening, the Welcome Reception, with a demo session organized by Rohde & Schwarz, took place in the main conference venue. On Tuesday evening, a brewery tour at Paulaner Bräuhaus at Kapuzinerplatz was followed by a Bavarian dinner with authentic cuisine and locally brewed beer sponsored by scia Systems (see Figure 6).
Figure 6. Attendees enjoy the conference dinner at the Paulaner Bräuhaus.
Figure 7. The attendees mingle between technical lectures and fruitful discussions
We could not have held the conference without the support of our sponsors. Thank you to all of our financial sponsors, Rohde & Schwarz, Qorvo, scia Systems, and the German Research Foundation (DFG) as well as Fraunhofer-Einrichtung für Mikrosysteme und Festkörper-Technologien EMFT for the conference organization.
The feedback from attendees and speakers has been very positive. Participants found the quality of the program to be very high and agreed that the events strengthened the microwave acoustics and mechanics community and provided good networking opportunities (see Figure 7). IC-MAM is planned to be continued as a biennial conference (Figure 8). Hence, the next edition will take place in 2024.
Figure 8. The IC-MAM’22 steering committee (left to right): Fabian Lurz (publications chair), Holger Maune (technical program chair), Andreas Link (technical program cochair), Amelie Hagelauer (general chair), Andreas Tag (general cochair), and Stefan J. Rupitsch (finance chair).
Visit the conference webpage at https://icmam-ieee.org/ and on social media (https://www.linkedin.com/company/79086822) for updates, including the next conference location, exact dates, and speakers.
[1] J. Kramer, D. Lee, S. Cho, S. Jahanbani, K. Lai, and R. Lu, “Acoustic wave focusing lens at radio frequencies in thin-film lithium niobate,” in Proc. IEEE MTT-S Int. Conf. Microw. Acoust. Mech. (IC-MAM), 2022, pp. 9–12, doi: 10.1109/IC-MAM55200.2022.9855343.
[2] N. Ishii, T. Yanagitani, K. Kondo, and M. Suzuki, “Mechanical transmission loss of the sole Bragg reflector by GHz pulse echo technique with thick SiO2 delay line,” in Proc. IEEE MTT-S Int. Conf. Microw. Acoust. Mech. (IC-MAM), 2022, pp. 82–85, doi: 10.1109/IC-MAM55200.2022.9855350.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MMM.2022.3220100