IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society

Updated August 19, 2011

Click here to go to our microwave events page

Who is the IEEE? From their web site... The IEEE name was originally an acronym for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. Today, the organization's scope of interest has expanded into so many related fields, that it is simply referred to by the letters I-E-E-E (pronounced Eye-triple-E).

For microwave engineers, you won't find a better source of information than the IEEE. However, the articles and presentations can be quite tedious as authors compete to show how smart they are. So there will always be a place for web sites such as Microwaves101 to dumb down the subject, spice it up and make it less painful than stepping on a rusty nail...

IEEE MTT Graduate Fellowship

In their own words...

The purpose of the IEEE Microwave Theory & Techniques (MTT) graduate fellowship is to recognize and provide financial assistance to graduate students who show promise and interest in pursuing a graduate degree in microwave engineering.

Up to six $6000 awards may be granted each year. The awards are presented at the International Microwave Symposium (IMS) in June 2009. Limited travel support is available to enable the winners to attend the IMS.

For more information please visit: http://www.mtt.org/

All applications should be submitted by December 12th, 2008 to:

Prof. John Papapolymerou
Georgia Institute of Technology
85 5th Street - Suite 417
Atlanta, GA 30308 USA
e-mail: papapol@ece.gatech.edu

IEEE Explore and copyright restrictions on IEEE papers

The IEEE has a great web site where most of their articles are archived, it's called IEEE Explore. You (or your company) need to join the IEEE before you can use it. Click here to go to IEEE Explore.

The terms of use are very specific, you should read them. Many engineers think it's OK to download articles to their hard drives, then email them to each other or put them in electronic collections on a server. Guess what? You are not supposed to do that! Microwaves101 tries to respect copywrited material, so you won't see us offering any of their articles as downloads. But we might quote them from time to time....

The dark side of writing a paper for the IEEE...

Before you go and write an article for the IEEE, let us tell you a little story. Not long ago an article was submitted to IEEE Microwave magazine, by one of the "executives" of Microwaves101. It was published in the February 2007 issue. And it had the wrong author listed. Great editing job, dudes! Don't quit the day job. No problem, you'd think that they'd address this problem by reprinting the article in its entirety in a follow-up issue, with the correct author given credit. Wrong, they won't do that. But you'd at least figure that they'd correct the article in the IEEE Explore database to show the correct author. Wrong again, they state that it is a policy that .pdf versions must exactly match printed versions. You can't make up stuff like this! Time to get a lawyer? Nah, that won't be half as much fun as bringing this to everyone's attention how out of touch the IEEE is when it comes to doing the right thing!

IEEE MTT-S

The Microwaves and Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S) is a subgroup within the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Although we might target the IEEE with so-called humor here at Microwaves101, the IEEE holds the world's repository of all electronics knowledge, including all things microwave. The collection of papers on the IEEE site go back at least to 1960. So why not just go to IEEE instead of Microwaves101? Two reasons: first, all of the IEEE papers are written so that you need a solid background in microwave theory to understand them (like you will get here at Microwaves101!) Some of the papers will give you not much more than a headache. And second, their collection is only accessible if you are a member (which costs money!) Sometimes your employer will pay so that you will have access to this great collection.

This virtual museum page is a free collection of stuff that the IEEE has gathered on microwave history.

The main IEEE MTT-S web site can be accessed by clicking here. Here is the purpose of this organization (we copied it from the MTT-S web site, hope they don't mind):

"The IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S) is a transnational society with more than 9,000 members and 80 chapters worldwide. Our society promotes the advancement of microwave theory and its applications, usually at frequencies from 200 MHz to 1 THz and beyond."

If you live in a big U.S. city, chances are there is a local IEEE chapter that organizes seminars and short courses from time to time. U.S. chapters include Los Angeles, San Fernando Valley, Santa Clara Valley, San Diego, Denver, Washington DC/Northern VA, Springfield, MA, Melbourne, Florida, Long Island, NY. There are local chapters in many other countries, comrades!

The IEEE Long Island section of MTT has some great lecture notes that you can access for free on their web site! (Click here.) Some especially good notes on noise figure are available for example.

The IMS Symposium

The "big show" of microwaves is put on by MTT-S every year, it's called the International Microwave Symposium (IMS). Typically 20,000 engineers from all over the world attend for up to a week. As many as 500 microwave vendors advertise their wares in the exhibition hall, and there is a student paper contest, great for recruiting smart college kids and scoring free drinks. In 2005 the show was in Long Beach California, 2006 was San Francisco, 2007 was Honolulu, 2008 was Atlanta, 2009 was Boston, 2010 was Anaheim, and 2011 was Baltimore. Here are the next two venues if you want to mark your calendars:

IMS 2012 - Montréal, Canada, June 17-22

IMS 2013 - Seattle, WA, June 1-7

See you there!