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ABOUT THE BOOK
This volume from the “Micro and Nanoengineering” series (edited by
the Publishing House of the Romanian Academy) includes the papers
which have been presented at the 8h “MEMSWAVE” workshop, organized
by Universitat Politenica de Catalunya, Barcelona, in the frame of
the “AMICOM” Network of Excellence financed by the EC.
The papers are focused on emerging MEMS technologies for RF and
millimeter wave circuits. MEMS technologies are now one the most
exciting and promising solution to manufacture high performance
millimeter wave circuits to be used in the emerging wireless
communication systems.
This volume is addressed to all interested people from
universities, research institutes or companies working in
microwaves, millimeter waves, and MEMS. It will be distributed to
the university libraries.
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ABOUT THE EDITORS
Lluis Pradell is Professors at Universitat Politenica de
Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain. He is working and teaching on various
subjects but mainly in the field microwave circuits and antennas,
microwave active devices, multimodal models for guiding-structures
and transitions, development of microwave and millimeter-wave
systems, and RF & microwave Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS),
in the frequency range 1 GHz to 75 GHz.
Lluis Jofre is Professors at Universitat Politenica de
Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain. His research interests include
antennas, electromagnetic scattering and imaging, and system
miniaturization for wireless and sensing applications.
Alexandru Müller, senior research scientist at the National
Institute for Research and Development in Microtechnologies (IMT
Bucharest), Romania, coordinator of the “MEMSWAVE” European
Project (1998 – 2001), nominated between the ten finalists in the
competition for the Descartes Prize 2002, coordinator of the
Romanian team in the AMICOM FP6 Network of Excellence (2004-2007).
Dan Dascalu, member of the Romanian Academy (of Sciences),
is professor of Electronic Engineering at the “Politechnica”
University, Bucharest, Romania, and General Manager of the
National Institute for Research and Development in
Microtechnologies (IMT Bucharest), Romania.
Robert Plana, professor at the “Paul Sabatier University”
of Toulouse, France and at the “Institute Universitaire de
France”, Paris, senior researcher at LAAS CNRS, Toulouse. He was
the coordinator of the FP6 Network of Excellence in RF MEMS
“AMICOM” (Priority 2, IST).
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FOREWORD
The huge development of modern communication systems lead to an
overcrowded frequency spectrum resulting to a continuous increase
of the allocated frequencies into the millimeter wave range and a
radical change concerning the performances, the reconfigurability
capabilities and cost of the electronic modules. Conventional
technologies have limitations that make very difficult to fulfill
these requirements. The last years have seen the emergence of the
RF-MEMS technology that seeks to overcome these limitations. In
this new technology, the mechanical and electrical functions are
combined to improve the performance of existing devices and
circuits, to allow on-wafer system integration and the creation of
completely new microsystems.
A lot of effort has been put into RF-MEMS technologies during the
past ten years. A broad range of components and subsystems have
been demonstrated, with functions and performances that are
significantly improved over conventional microwave and millimetre
(mm)-wave technologies.
To realize the RF microsystem concept, research and collaboration
in many different fields including fabrication technology,
material science, electromagnetism, micromechanics, thermal and
electrical modelling, characterization, packaging and reliability
is required.
The main scope of the MEMSWAVE workshop is to bring together
scientists from different universities, research institutes, and
industrial companies interested in the development of the RF-MEMS
field and to create a forum for the knowledge exchange between the
RF-MEMS players. The workshop is now technically sponsored by the
European Microwave Association (EuMA)
The MEMSWAVE workshop was generated by the European project
“Micromachined Circuites for Microwave and Millimeter Wave
Applications” <<MEMSWAVE>> (1998-2001) coordinated by
IMT-Bucharest. The project was nominated between the ten finalists
(from 108 participants) to the Descartes Prize 2002.
The first 2 editions of the MEMSWAVE workshop were organized in
Sinaia (Romania) in 1999 and 2001. A special volume in the series
Micro and Nanoengineering “Micromachined Microwave Devices and
Circuits” was dedicated to the second edition of the workshop and
was published in 2002. Starting from 2002, the MEMSWAVE workshops
became an itinerant European event. The next editions were held in
Heraklion and Toulouse. From 2004 the MEMSWAVE workshop was
connected to the European FP6 Network of Excellence in RF MEMS “AMICOM”.
Most of the European teams involved in these challenging topics
are partners in the AMICOM project. The workshop was organized in
Uppsala (2004), Lausanne (2005), Orvieto (2006), Barcelona (2007)
and became important instruments for knowledge dissemination of
the AMICOM network results.
It is now a tradition to publish the extended version of the
papers of the Series of Micro and Nanotechnologies of the Romanian
Academy Press. Previous volumes may be requested at IMT-Bucharest
([email protected]). The present volume contains the papers presented
at the 8th edition of the MEMSWAVE workshop organized by the
Universitat Politenica de Catalunya, in June 2007, at Barcelona.
The Editors |
