This is the first edition of TARGET.news, the electronic newsletter of TARGET - Top Amplifier Research Groups in a European Team. As from now we will publish every two months the latest developments, achievements and news within the project.

As you are receiving this first TARGET.news only as a one-time letter, please register for a regular receipt, unless you have already registered on the TARGET homepage.

You are invited to forward the newsletter to any person, who might be interested in the topics of TARGET!

Topics

• Meet&Greet
• Strategy
• Tutorials
• Exchange
• Woman Reasearch
• Special Event at MIKON 2004
• Quickshot Modelling
• First TARGET Publication

Events

• First Summer School
• Special Events

TOPICS

Meet&Greet

TARGET is part of the 6th Framework Programme (FP6) of the European Commission. Its aim is to make better use of European research efforts through the creation of an international market for science and technology - a "European Research Area". One of the first and largest projects of its type, TARGET presented itself to the public at the press conference on January 28, 2004. Professor Dr. Gottfried Magerl talked about the opportunities arising out of cooperative research on a European level in the areas of amplifier and microwave research. Prof. Tom Brazil of The National University of Ireland focused on the opportunities and benefits for the 47 participating project partners whereas Dr. Knut Consemüller, chairman of the Austrian Council and research strategy consultant of the Austrian government, emphasized the importance of European Projects within the Austrian research strategy.

On February 19/20, 2005, all 47 project partners met in Vienna to define the main research topics of the project for the first 18 months. During the meeting, all participating researchers could access the fully equipped laboratory of the department for Electrical Measurement and Circuit Design and the clean room of the Center for Microstructure . Professor Dr. Franz G. Rammerstorfer, vice-chancellor forresearch at TU-Vienna acclaimed the project partners and congratulated the successful launch of TARGET. "By acting as the Scientific Coordinator of TARGET, Vienna University of Technology will strengthen its leading position in an important research area", Dr. Rammerstofer pointed out.

Strategy

The headline obviously points to one of our numerous TARGET work packages. Why shall it then have special attention and coverage in our newsletter? Well, it is somewhat different compared to all others. First of all it is not directly related to microwave power amplifier research, secondly its task force mostly consists of non-core members but - as all other work packages - it will be most crucial for TARGET's success.

TARGET Strategy acts as a kind of advisory board both to the Steering Committee and to the Board Meeting. At present its members are in alphabetical order Sotiris Bantas (Helic), Klaus Beilenhoff (UMS), Wolfgang Bösch (Filtronics), Tom Brazil (UCD), Georg Fischer (Lucent), Dietmar Köther (IMST), Gottfried Magerl (TUW), Olli Pekonen (APLAC), Werner Simbürger (Infineon), and Michael Uren (Qinetiq). The task force evaluates the research done within our NoE. This evaluation will include scientific quality and relevance of our results, as seen from the industry research point of view. Further, the TARGET Strategy group identifies future industry needs and research trends, it develops strategies to enter new fields with high chances of success, and it proposes new TARGET entrants, in particular it evaluates applications for associate memberships. It reports at least twice a year to the TARGET Steering Committee and to the Board Meeting.

As a first task TARGET Strategy will evaluate the effectiveness of the measurable success criteria that have been assigned to all of our work packages and to the network as a whole. This will be done in our first meeting scheduled for June 18. At this meeting we'll have to make recommendations with respect to several applications for TARGET associate membership. Apparently, TARGET is attractive!

Tutorials

The objective of the TARGET TUTORIAL work package is to support TARGET's goal to create a co-operative network by establishing an internal forum for regular discussion of scientific work for the full duration of TARGET. This is accomplished by creating and organising a set of TARGET TUTORIALS for internal discussion of scientific work, problems, and of preliminary results on TARGET related research.

For the first 18 months 8 conventional tutorials are planned where 5 of these will be held in 2004. Additionally to the conventional tutorials a concept for an on-line tutorial is currently developed and a first on-line tutorial will be organised within the first 18 months.

The 2004 tutorials will be on the following topics:

• Semiconductor materials and devices
  Crete, September 2004, in conjunction with TARGET summer school
• Device characterisation
  Amsterdam, October 2004, in conjunction with European Microwave Conference
• Device modelling
  Amsterdam, October 2004, in conjunction with European Microwave Conference
• Amplifier design
  Rome, November 2004, in conjunction with INMMIC Conference
• Linearization
  Rome, November 2004, in conjunction with INMMIC Conference

A call for presentations along with further details on the tutorials will be sent to the TARGET core and associated members soon. Participation to the tutorials is limited to TARGET members only and is free. Core members can get up to full financial travel re-imbursement (depending on the number of participants).

Exchange

TARGET EXCHANGE is a program within the TARGET Network of Excellence and is realized in the framework of the corresponding TARGET Work Package. TARGET EXCHANGE aims at enhancing and supporting financially the exchange of researchers, PhD students and post-doc scientists between the participating institutes within TARGET. It is being considered as a very significant component among the activities of the TARGET integration pathway since it stimulates the cooperation between the participating institutes and enhances the exchange of scientific research through its implementation.

TARGET EXCHANGE program focuses on mobilizing an adequate number of researchers and PhD students that will take part in the exchange procedure. Our goal is to have a total mobility of [minimum 15 - average 20] people for the first 18 months and indeed we succeeded to have more than 20 open vacancies and 8 exchangers known so far.

TARGET participants could easily view the TARGET EXCHANGE program through the web site. Inside the exchange web pages the visitor may find all corresponding information regarding the exchange program itself, the institutes offering open vacancies along with the required research assignments and explanations and definitions of the financial procedures for allocating of funds.

The only thing that each researcher / PhD student willing to participate to the program has to do is to view the open vacancies and complete a simple APPLICATION FORM stating his background and his preferred vacancies with a priority rank. The TARGET EXCHANGE Steering Committee will then combine the open vacancies with the requested applications while a great part of the exchangers expenses are covered through the TARGET project itself (transportation tickets, board and lodging for 1-3 months stay).

All visitors that are interested to participate in the TARGET EXCHANGE program are welcomed to explore the web site menu and corresponding links in order to find all the needed information for the exchange scheme as well as the necessary documentation for their participation. The site will be soon connected to the official TARGET NoE home page. For more information please contact the TARGET EXCHANGE WP leader Dr Rodoula Makri (Institute of Communications and Computer Systems, Athens, Greece) at rodia@esd.ece.ntua.gr.

Woman Reasearch

It can be stated as a fact that Science and engineering fields do not attract women leading to an overall low percentage of women scientists and researchers. Even in a very large NoE like TARGET, the women participation seems less than 10% of the total researchers. This fact, taking also into account the EC guidelines, implies that specific actions should be implemented to promote women research in all European projects and TARGET as well. For that reason attempts were made to encourage women researchers to actively participate in the all TARGET activities. Dr. Rodoula Makri (rodia@esd.ece.ntua.gr) has been assigned to be the Gender Manager and to promote women research and activities within TARGET. This activities aim to encourage women researchers to participate in every management and technical committee of the WPs as possible, to form an independent external peer committee responsible for the monitoring of all the gender equality issues within the project and to initiate a women research forum inside the present TARGET Newsletter among others.

The TARGET Gender Manager has already started to form a full and detailed recording of the women scientists participating in TARGET in order to explore and exploit the current human female resources and the women capabilities and expertise and to plan specific activities. TARGET would like to take part in the current integration and dissemination activities like TARGET EXCHANGE and TARGET SUMMER SCHOOL or similar events, conferences or workshops within the NoE. Also we would like to initiate the "women researcher's page" within this Newsletter where the TARGET female participants could exchange ideas and publish articles and establish liaisons with women working in relevant fields.

Furthermore, focusing on the strengthening of the women research and the participation of the female members to similar clustering activities we would like to encourage all women researchers to establish connections and liaisons with relevant European groups like "women in science" organizations in different countries, the Helsinki Group and Women and Science Unit of the European Commission. A relevant web site for TARGET WOMEN RESEARCH will be soon available on the TARGET web. Finally, in the framework of the next IST event in Hague (November 2004) a forum/group: Gender Integration on ICT under the EC will have a meeting and present its achievements there. The women's research page of the present Newsletter will inform you reguralry while we would like to welcome all your future relevant publications and articles.

Special Event at MIKON 2004

The very first TARGET Special Event was embedded in this year's XV International Conference on Microwaves, Radar and Wireless Communications, better known as MIKON 2004 which was held from May 17 to May 19 in Warsaw, Poland. The TARGET contribution started already on Sunday, May 16 with a tutorial on microwave transistor power amplifiers which was presented jointly by Janusz Dobrowolski and Andrzej Jelenski, and by Giorgio Leuzzi and Paolo Colantonio. Our Polish students got a four hours comprehensive course on the fundamentals of microwave amplifiers with particular emphasis laid on power added efficiency and linearity aspects. When it came to class F and harmonic loads our Italian TARGET members would have needed at least another four hours to present their rich and extremely well prepared material. Next day I had the opportunity to present our NoE, its goals and technical aims along with our management principles to a very interested audience that hardly stopped to ask questions on how to successfully apply for EU funding.

Starting some 30 years ago as a national event MIKON has developed into a truly international conference with a steadily increasing attendance peaking in this year's high of about 250 scientists and students. At this point I would like to extend my congratulations to the conference chairman Prof. Józef Modelski and to his team. It is clearly foreseeable that MIKON will evolve into the central and east European microwave event. Therefore, make a reservation in your calendar for the XVI MIKON in 2006!

Quickshot Modelling

The Quickshot Modelling activities (WP 2.1.2.x) are scheduled to take off in July 2004, but some preparatory work has already been performed. In WP 2.1.2.2 on Device Modelling, preferences for device technologies and availabilities of samples have been recorded. It has been decided to operate in a cluster-like format, with focus on one device technology in each cluster. The selected device technologies are GaAs pHEMTs, SiGe HBTs, GaN HEMTs, and LDMOS devices. There are between 3 to 8 partners participating in each cluster, with complementary modelling approaches and measurement capabilities. A similar approach is currently being taken for WP 2.1.2.3 on Amplifier Modelling. Amplifiers for both wireless handsets and base stations are envisaged. Finally, a literature study and some informal discussions between partners concerning strategies for model comparisons (WP 2.1.2.1.) have been conducted. Especially this latter task seems very challenging, since no systematic ways of thoroughly comparing models, and quantifying their quality, have been published, not for RF-models but neither for LF-models.

First TARGET Publication

Simulationsunterstützte thermische Analyse einer Galliumarsenid-Feldeffekt-Leistungstransistorbaugruppe (Simulation based thermal analysis of a GaAs field effect power transistor assembly)

Gernot Hanreich, Martin Mündlein, Johann Nicolics and Markus Mayer Presented by Martin Mündlein at the conference of GMM on 4/5th February 2004, Feldbach, Germany

EVENTS

First Summer School

The First TARGET Summer School on "Microwave transistors: materials and design" will take place from September 13th to 17th 2004 in Crete/Greece at the Hotel Fodele Beach (www.fodelebeach.gr/back.htm).
Lecturers from leading European institutes will cover the basics of semiconductor materials and devices, heteroepitaxy and materials characterization up to the variety of silicon, III-V and wide-gap materials devices.
The school is organized by Prof. E. Langer, TU Wien. The local organizer is Dr. G. Konstantinidis from FORTH and W. Richter, University of Jena is responsible for the content of the school.

The number of participants will be limited to 30. For students from network partners the courses, accommodation, meals and travel will be free of charge. Students from external institutions will have to cover the fee for the courses, accommodation and meals themselves.
As the number of participants is limited, please do register as soon as possible at!

Find further information on www.target-net.org or write an email to Erasmus Langer, to George Konstantinidis or to Wolfgang Richter.

Special Events

• The first SPECIAL EVENT of TARGET NoE, has been already held in Warszawa on May 16-17, during the MIKON-2004 Conference (the 1st Microwave and Radar week in Poland).
  In particular, on Sunday, May 16th we have had a MIKON/TARGET Joint Tutorial on "Microwave Transistor Power Amplifiers", and on Monday, May 17th there was a general presentation of TARGET NoE by Prof. Gottfried Magerl (Vienna Technical University, Austria).
• The second SPECIAL EVENT of TARGET NoE, organized by Prof. Gottfried Magerl, will be a focused session on TARGET within the GAAS 2004 symposium (Amsterdam, 11-12 October 2004, during the European Microwave Week). The focused session will have the following title: "TARGET: Coordinated Microwave Amplifier Research in Europe" and it will consist of five contributions from distinguished invited speakers.

Other activities concerning the organization of SPECIAL EVENTS in the framework of TARGET NoE are currently taken in consideration. In particular, the proposal of a LSNA (European) user forum to be held in Amsterdam during the EuMWeek, in connection with the ARFTG (Automatic RF Techniques Group, USA) user forum, is under negotiation.

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Imprint

published by: ftw. Forschungszentrum Telekommunikation Wien Betriebs-GmbH, Donau-City-Straße 1, 1220 Vienna, Austria, Phone +43/1/5052830-0

responsible for content: Prof. Dr. Gottfried Magerl, Dr. Eleftherios Iliopoulos