Skip to content.

TARGET - Top Amplifier Research Groups in a European Team

Top Menu
Home    Presscorner    Newsletter    TARGET.news 3/2004
Document Actions

TARGET.news 3/2004

by Webmaster — last modified 2006-04-25 14:18

The e-letter of the European Project TARGET - Top Amplifier Research Groups in a European Team

Topics

Events

TOPICS

TARGET at Conferences

For our community the scientific highlight of this fall undoubtedly was the European Microwave Week 2004 which took place in Amsterdam from October 11 to October 15. The chairman Frank van den Bogaart and his team did a great job in organising a series of interesting conferences together with a big exhibition. It was a pleasure to see many colleagues attached to TARGET – one could almost have the impression of an unofficial Board Meeting. In fact, quite a number of work packages used the conference to organise work package meetings in parallel. Our special event, however, was the TARGET focused session that was organised within GAAS®2004 under the title “TARGET: Co-ordinated Microwave Amplifier Research in Europe”. The following five contributions highlighted the scientific framework of TARGET:

  • P. Colantonio et al., “High Linearity and Efficiency Microwave PAs”
  • J.-P. Teyssier et al.,  “Large Signal Characterisation of Microwave Power Devices”
  • A. Alabadelah et al., “Nonlinear Models of Microwave Power Devices”
  • J. Würfl and M. Schlechtweg, “Frontiers of III/V Compounds and Devices”
  • M. O’Droma et al., “Linearisation Issues in Microwave Amplifiers”


The great interest of the conference attendants was really remarkable. Our focussed session was – apart from the opening session – by far the one with the biggest audience. My estimate is that we could attract more than 120 colleagues, quite a number of them patiently standing in the back of the big conference room. At the end of this year’s Microwave Week we organised two TARGET Tutorials on “Device Modelling” and on “Device Characterisation” with 35 to 40 participants each.
One month later we met in Rome on top of the hills of Frascati in the marvellous surroundings of Villa Mondragone. Ernesto Limiti revived the famous International Workshop on Integrated Nonlinear Microwave and Millimetre-Wave Circuits (INMMiC) that was organised before by the University of Duisburg. To make it short: It was a revival with splendour and grandeur! On November 15 and 16 a total of forty contributions was presented organised in five plenary sessions and one poster session. Most papers were authored, co-authored, or presented by TARGET members! In the late afternoon of the first day the TARGET Strategy Group had its second meeting to discuss the future direction of our NoE. The workshop was followed by two tutorials on “Linearisation” and on “Amplifier Design”. Both tutorials attracted an audience of 60 participants.
We are looking forward to the next European Microwave Week taking place from October 3 to October 7, 2005, in Paris and to the coming INMMiC early in 2006 where we expect an even increased interest!

Gottfried Magerl

back to top

Exchange

During the first 10 months of the EXCHANGE program 24 vacancies have been offered and 13 exchanges took place.  Taking into account that our minimum goal is 15 (optimum 20) exchanges it shows that we are close to our goal.

Please continue to offer vacancies and especially to encourage your students to participate in the TARGET EXCHANGE project and also to have TARGET EXCHANGE inside your schedules for the periods to come. We would like to remind you once again that you find our web address on www.target-net.org in the intranet.

The status so far is as follows:

  • 7 exchange stays have already been completed
  • 2 exchange stays will be completed by the end of 2004
  • 4 exchange stays will take place during the first 6 months of 2005


Tow more vacancies will open soon and will be posted on the TARGET EXCHANGE web site. There are many vacancies to select from and we would like to thank all the people who contributed to the exchange program for their interest and support. 

We would like to remind the hosts and exchangers that have already finished their work, to fill in the “host questionnaire” and “exchangers questionnaire” respectively, which can be found on the EXCHANGE web site.  

Most importantly we would like to know whether and how many publications (journals, conferences, formal reports etc.) refer to work done within TARGET EXCHANGE. This is a very important issue, which forms a crucial and measurable criterion for the success of the program.

For further information please contact Dr. Rodoula Makri, TARGET EXCHANGE WP Leader at rodia@esd.ece.ntua.gr.

Rodoula Makri

back to top

Power Amplifier Design


The aim of work package 2.2.D.1 is to overview and coordinate research activities on power amplifier (PA) design and related issues. The team reviews design criteria and their potentials or drawbacks according to applications (WLAN, Satellite, etc.) or available device technologies (GaAs PHEMT, Si/SiGe BiCMOS, GaN,etc.).

Different PA classes are still investigated and compared, such as pulsed and switched mode Class E amplifiers or harmonic manipulation solutions (Class F, 2nd HT, etc.). Moreover several PAs have been designed and realised as demonstrators of the investigated design methodologies:

  • GaAs PHEMT Class F MMIC PAs (single and balanced devices) for X-Band applications, designed by ID.46 (Fig. 1 [1])
  • Si/SiGe BiCMOS for 5GHz WLAN applications, designed by ID.45 (Fig. 2[2])


and further designs are currently being realised.  

The team also performed several dissemination activities:

two tutorials were organised:
- MIKON/TARGET Joint Tutorial on "Microwave Transistor Power Amplifiers"
  (May 2004, 5 speakers - 30 attendees)

- TARGET Tutorial on “Amplifier Design”, joint with the tutorial on Linearisation
  (November 2004, 6 speakers – 59 attendees)


Paolo Colantonio

back to top

Transmitter Modelling for Broadband Wireless Access

Announced in Oct. 04, the ‘Transmitter Modelling for Broadband Wireless Access’ Task Force has released a platform for the development and test of dedicated behavioural models to accelerate and improve the design flow for wireless communications applications. The outcome consists in a platform that merges commercial CAD engines along with state-of-the-art modelling techniques allowing analogue/mixed signal designers to have direct access to an all-inclusive, software radio to RF and high-frequency subsystems.

The technical novelty of such test bench is twofold. Firstly, the feasibility to adopt the tool for several radio access principles, e.g. IEEE802.11a, UWB, Hiperlan2, Satellite Ka-band Rx-Tx. The platform offers an inside view on the critical factors in systems and enables the analysis of the current multi-standard compatibility. It hence provides appropriate trade-off between sub-circuit specs, included the PA, mixer and VCO. Secondly the capability to validate the progressive growth of the behavioural model approaches until reaching the overall transmitter system, stimulating the research efforts in the field of modelling of nonlinear dynamic microwave systems.

Some physical subsystems have already been acquired and characterized according to their behavioural description. They are to be included in the platform. The latter analyses complex signal excitations which are normally difficult to generate physically, like 54Mbps QAM-OFDM. The response to them represents a test of great importance for innovative architecture and systems. 

Alessandro Cidronali

back to top

Recent TARGET Tutorials

Up to now five TARGET tutorials were held, focussing on the following TARGET key research topics:

“Semiconductor Materials and Devices”, “Device Characterisation”, “Device Modelling”, “Power Amplifier Design” and “PA Linearisation”.

These TARGET internal tutorials enjoyed great popularity. Originally designed for 25 participants the participation started with 18 attendees at the first tutorial and grew rapidly up to more than 60 researchers and PhD students at the last tutorial. A key factor for the tutorial’s success was definitely the high quality of presentations of top researchers in the field.

To reduce travel time and costs, tutorials are not stand-alone events - usually two tutorials were held in consecution.  Moreover, the tutorials were usually linked to a larger microwave event, such as the European Microwave Week, to let the participants benefit from both events. 

For the coming year further tutorials will be planned covering topics of TARGET research interest. The next tutorials - to be held in April - will focus on the TARGET Quick Shot program and on transmitter design.

Markus Mayer

back to top

5th ARFTG NVNA Users' Forum

The 5th ARFTG NVNA (Nonlinear Vector network Analysis) Users’ Forum was organized for the first time in Europe (Amsterdam, RAI Convention Center) in conjunction with the European Microwave Week 2004. This forum has been co-sponsored by ARFTG and the European TARGET Network of Excellence.

And a great success it was! More than 40 participants from industry and the academic world signed in for the Forum on Tuesday evening, October 12th. The meeting started with two interactive discussions on the definition of weakly nonlinear systems and the power of multisines.
Next, Johan Paduart from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium) and Giovanni Loglio from the University of Firenze (Italy) presented their Ph.D. research and asked the audience for their opinion on some problems. This was followed by three groups presenting their latest research advancements.

The Forum organizers were Dominique Schreurs (K.U.Leuven, ID 22), Wendy Van Moer (VUB, ID 54) and Kate Remley (NIST).  

A summary of the meeting is available at http://www.arftg.org/.

Dominique Schreurs

back to top

Call for Papers

TARGET Workshop on RF Power Amplifier

The next SPECIAL EVENT of TARGET NoE, organised by Prof. Paolo Colantonio and Prof. Giorgio Umberto Pignatel, will be the first TARGET Workshop on RF Power Amplifiers, to be held in Orvieto, Italy, Thursday, April 14 through Friday, April 15, 2005.
The aim of this workshop is to put in evidence the outcomes of research activities performed in the first year of Target network. Presentation of technical papers are solicited in the following topics:

  • Device technologies for Power Amplifier
  • Characterisation and Modelling of Power Devices
  • Design and modelling of microwave Power Amplifiers
  • Linearisation


To submit a paper, an abstract of 2 pages in PDF format must be submitted by January 30th 2005 by email to Prof. Paolo Colantonio.
For further details please see http://www.target-net.org

The authors are responsible for formatting. All fonts must be embedded. 

Authors of accepted papers will be required to submit a final paper of 4 pages in pdf format, for publication in the Workshop proceeding until March 19th 2005.

Notice of paper acceptance and the required information to electronically submit the final version of the paper will be sent to the authors after February 18th 2005.

Paolo Colantonio

back to top

Events

Workshop on RF Power Amplifier

The first TARGET Workshop on RF Power Amplifier will be held in Orvieto, Italy, Thursday, April 14 until Friday, April 15, 2005.

Tutorials

Tutorials build a forum for discussion of scientific work, problems, and of preliminary results on TARGET related research.
The following tutorials will be held within the next months:

  • Quickshot Short Term Prototyping
    Orvieto, Italy, Saturday April 16, 2005

  • Tutorial on Quickshot Modelling
    Orvieto, Italy, Saturday April 16, 2005

  • Tutorial on Transmitter Design
    Orvieto, Italy, Saturday April 16, 2005

    back to top

 PLEASE NOTE:

To receive target news regularly, please subscribe on http://www.target-net.org/press/newsletter. You can also unsubscribe from this service at any time.

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, Mag. Sue Raab