Commission B
Fields and Waves

Chair: Professor A. David Olver (UK)
Vice Chair: Professor Chalmers M. Butler (USA)

1. General

Commission B has had another active triennium with a format of events similar to that of previous triennia. The worldwide Commission B community is large, active, and participates regularly in international events. The study of electromagnetic theory and practice through microwaves and antennas benefits from international collaboration, and URSI provides an excellent forum for the exchange if ideas and dissemination of information. URSI has always been strongly supported by Commission B engineers and scientists. This continues in many ways. Conferences have been sponsored by both international URSI and national societies. The national sponsorships tend to go unreported but provide an important feeder of committed people for the international events. Particularly notable is the US National Committee for URSI which sponsors the annual summer APS/USNC meeting and the winter Boulder meetings. This triennium has also seen much greater interaction between electromagnetic scientist from the former Soviet Union countries and western countries. The commission B community in Russia and Ukraine is very large and URSI has contributed in the last three years to developing contacts between scientists.

2. Electromagnetic Theory Symposium

The main event which Commission B organizes between General Assemblies is the International Symposium on Electromagnetic Theory. The 15th Symposium in the series took place over four days in St. Petersburg, Russia from 23-26 May 1995. The decision to hold the 15th Symposium in Russia was made in 1992 shortly after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. This led Commission members to warmly embrace the invitation from the Russian Commission B. The organization presented considerable challenges but the results showed that it was successful, beneficial to participants and particularly rewarding to those in Russia and Ukraine who do not have adequate funds to travel to conferences.

A total of 348 participants took part in the 1995 Symposium from 33 countries with the largest contingent from the host country. The Technical Program Committee received 456 synopses which led to the final presentation of about 270 papers. There were many novel and original presentations which were published in a 894 page proceedings. A popular feature was the invited lectures which provided a good opportunity to hear from experts.

A Young Scientist Award Program at the symposium enabled 25 young scientists to participate who would not otherwise have been able to go to St. Petersburg. Funds for the awards came partly from the Commission B triennial allocation from URSI and partly from the general registration fees. The enthusiasm of the young scientists was very evident. They fully participated and availed themselves of every opportunity to make the best use of their time to interact with other participants.

Initial plans are in place for the 1998 Electromagnetic Theory Symposium to be held in Thessaloniki, Greece, during 25-28 May 1998. Local Organizing and Technical Program Committees have been formed and are engaged in the early stages of making plans for the meeting. A new feature is a web site that has been set up for the symposium: http://www.ursicommb.eng.clemson.edu, http://www.ursicommb.eng.clemson.edu.

Proposals to host the 2001 Electromagnetic Theory Symposium were submitted by Canada, China, and Japan. The official members of Commission B elected Victoria, BC, in Canada as the venue of the 2001 symposium.

3. Meetings Sponsored by Commission B

During the triennium, Commission B sponsored a number of meeting that addressed topics within the purview of its terms of reference. A table reflecting the meetings sponsored and the mode of sponsorship is provided on the next page.

4. Terms of Reference

The Commission terms of reference have been refined over the years yet they were modified by action of the Commission at the Lille General Assembly. They are now judged to be more in tune with modern-day electromagnetics and they allude to the applications embraced by Commission activities. The amended terms of reference are listed below.

Commission B -- FIELDS AND WAVES, Electromagnetic theory and applications.

The interest of Commission B is fields and waves, encompassing theory, analysis, computation, experiments, and validation. Areas of emphasis are:

Time-domain and frequency-domain phenomena; Scattering and diffraction; General propagation including waves in specialized materials; Guided waves; Antennas and radiation; Inverse scattering.

The Commission fosters the creation, development, and refinement of analytical, numerical, and measurement techniques to understand these phenomena. It encourages innovation and seeks to apply interdisciplinary concepts and methods.

5. Fellows of URSI

At the Commission B Business Meeting held on Thursday, 29 August, 1996, there was a discussion of the proposal to establish the Fellows of URSI program as proposed by the United Kingdom. The members present at the meeting were unanimous in supporting the proposal with the understanding that Fellows should be awarded for distinguished scientific contributions to URSI.

6. Election of Commission B Officers

In Commission B the Vice Chair succeeds to the Chair for the triennium to follow and the Vice Chair is elected by the member nation representatives. An election was conducted and Prof. Staffan Strom (Sweden) was elected Vice Chair, with Prof. Karl Langenberg (Germany) elected alternate vice chair.

7. Review of Radio Science

At the Commission B Business Meeting of Friday 30 August, 1996, the Review of Radio Science was discussed extensively. It was decided that

The Commission should publish review articles for the Review of Radio Science. There was a preference for broad reviews of interest to a wide readership.

The Commission should participate in the bibliography. This was decided on a straw vote. There was a sizeable minority against participating, due to the considerable effort involved in compiling the list of references. It is suggested that consideration should be given to reducing this effort. It is also strongly recommended that future bibliographies are placed on the World Wide Web.

The Commission Editor designated for the next triennium is Professor Yahya Rahmit-Samii (USA)

The Commission Editor of the bibliography is to be Professor Makato Ando (Japan).

8. The Radio Science Bulletin

Member nation representatives at the 30 August, 1996, Commission B Business discussed the Radio Science Bulletin and supported the idea of associate editors who are charged with the responsibility of finding articles of general interest to URSI. The view was expressed that administrative information pertaining to the Bulletin should go on the WWW. There was some concern that safeguards be put in place to prevent the Bulletin from becoming yet another scientific and engineering journal. And there was general agreement that a deliberate attempt be made by the editorial board to determine those topics within the expertise of a given commission that are of interest to other commissions and have a series of articles published on such topics. Wider distribution of the Bulletin was encouraged with consideration given to placing issues on the WWW.

The Commission B Associate Editor for the next triennium will be Professor J. M. Arnold, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, United Kingdom. E-mail: j.arnold@glasgow.ac.uk.

9. General Assembly

At the end of the triennium, the preparations for the Lille General Assembly took up considerable, but worthwhile, Commission B effort. Twenty convenors put together a wide ranging and comprehensive program selected from over 260 contributions submitted to the Commission B sessionsóthe largest number to any Commission. In addition the Commission participated in nine joint sessions. B session organization was guided by the desire to focus on fundamentals of fields and waves, while the needs of the applications-oriented commissions dictated the topics of joint sessions. Poster sessions served partially as ìoverflowî for oral sessions but many of the poster-session papers were selected because their contents were appropriate for this mode of information transfer. In numerous cases authors requested that their papers be in poster session. In general the papers in the poster sessions were of high quality. The URSI Young Scientist Programme has supported the attendance at Lille of 120 young men and women, thirty (25%) of whom are designated Com. B.

10. Recommendations

At the Commission B Business Meeting held on Thursday, 29 August, 1996, there was general discussion of the program, dates, and format of general assemblies. There is general support for the format of single sessions covering specific Commission B topics together with joint sessions covering applications and interdisciplinary topics. There was a preference expressed for more reviews by both invited and contributed authors. Commission B feels strongly that the printed program should contain the times for delivery of the papers. This is essential if participants are to be able to move between sessions. There continues to be opposition in Commission B to having general assemblies that begin on a date that falls in the last two weeks of August, which point has been made repeatedly to the Council by member countries and by Commission B but which seems to have fallen on deaf ears. The general assembly attendance in recent years has been impacted by this unfortunate choice of dates, especially among those from North America who otherwise would have attended. The Commission, by a show of hands, voted overwhelmingly (about 60 to 3) for shorter duration general assemblies as proposed by the Long Range Planning Committee, with the technical program contained within one week.

Better access to e-mail and telnet facilities at general assemblies is highly desirable and should be brought to the attention of the Long Range Planning Committee and of the attention of future host committees. The hosts at Lille took a good first step by making e-mail available but the lines were long and facilities for access to telnet are not provided.

11. Communications

The Official Members were kept informed of Commission B activities during the triennium by means of three news letters reporting meetings and highlighting information relevant to Commission B.

Commission B has created a web page at URL : http://ece.clemson.edu/cem/ursi/ which is still under development and which contains information at this stage devoted primarily to the 1998 Electromagnetic Theory Symposium.