Plenary Talks; PT1: Smart RF Microsystem for Advanced Communications

It is well know that the third millennium will go wireless and we are noting a huge explosion of applications dedicated to automotive area (safety control, traffic management), space area (multimedia communications), medical applications (smart RF tag at 24 GHz) and survey environment. All these emerging applications will result to an increase of the frequency spectrum crowding leading to strong interference problem and limiting for instance the bit rate of the RF connections. All these requirements are leading the conventional approach for the high frequency circuits obsolete and there is urgent need to find new concepts in order to fulfill the target of the future telecommunications systems. A new paradigm is emerging for the next generation of electronic modules that will be embedded withiin the wireless system. Actually, the new circuits might feature novel concepts in order to push the performance in term of loss, noise linearity, compatibility with multi-standards systems, flexibility, power consumption and cost. Furthermore the frequency spectrum overcrowding will result to a dramatic increase in the frequency allocation that will be pushed in the millimeter wave range. One solution deals with the exploitation of the micromachining capabilities of the silicon and other materials (like organic materials for example) and the advanced techniques concerning the microwave modules assembling (3D assembling or flip chip assembling). It turns out to a new concept emergence: The MEMS concept consisting to realize "smart and reconfigurable" microsystem for millimeter wave range. This concept could be addressed through three different ways.