Chair: Professor A. Seeds (United Kingdom)

Vice-Chair: Professor P. Russer (Germany)

The Commission held two business meetings on 19 and 21 August 2002. This is a report on the main business transacted as well as on the Scientific Programme organised at the XXVIIth General Assembly of URSI.

1. Chair’s report (Prof. Alwyn Seeds)

The last triennium has been active and successful. The commission focused financial support on international meetings of high scientific value (ISSSE01, AP-RASC01) and also supported six other meetings with publicity and technical informationship.

The balance of the commission budget in the amount of € 9,000 was used to support the registration fees for the general lecturer and a geographically spread group of invited speakers at the XVII^th General Assembly. The closing balance of € 75 should be carried forward by the incoming chairman.

A detailed report on the triennium is on the URSI WEB site.

2. New Chair and Vice Chair for 2002-2005.

At the conclusion of the General Assembly, Professor Peter Russer, former Vice Chair, took over the Chair from Professor Alwyn Seeds. Two candidates had been nominated for the position of Vice-Chair of Commission D for 2002 to 2005, namely:

Dr. Frédérique de Fornel, France
Dr. Hiroyo Ogawa, Japan

According to the URSI rules any official member who was present at the business meeting was given the opportunity to change his vote (if previously cast by mail). The votes cast for the Vice Chair candidates were:

Dr. Frédérique de Fornel 21
Dr. Hiroyo Ogawa 21

Since either candidates won equal numbers of votes, Commission D recommended to the Council to choose one of the candidates under consideration of the international balance of the chairs. Subsequently, Dr. de Fornel was appointed by the Council Vice Chairman of the Commission D for the triennium 2002-2005.

3. Appointment of Commission D Editor for Review of Radio Science

The Vice-Chair will be appointed editor of RRS. Both candidates for Vice Chair had indicated that they would undertake this task, if elected.

4. Radioscience Bulletin. Appointment of Comm. D Associate Editor

The commission editor will be Smail Tedjini, replacing Roberto Sorrentino who completed his three-year term in this post.

5. Evaluation of Young Scientist program

The Commission D decided to grant the Young Scientist Award to Ondrej Cip, Josef Lazar and Frantisek Petru for their contribution

„ Frequency Method of Sub-Nanometer Distance Measurement"

The paper has been considered extremely clearly written. The results are truly state of the art. This work solved an actual scientific and engineering problem excellently.

6. Terms of Reference

Since electronic and photonic devices have reached system level, the commission noted that this development has to be considered in the terms of reference. Changes in the first two terms of reference were suggested: The first term of reference "Electronic devices and applications" should be changed to "Electronic devices, circuits and applications" and the second term of reference "Photonic devices and applications" should be changed to "Photonic devices, systems and applications". It was resolved unanimously to change the terms of reference in the proposed way.

In the Council meeting the wider extension of the terms of reference into

1. Electronic devices, circuits, systems and applications
2. Photonic devices, systems and applications
3. Physics, materials, CAD, technology and reliability of electronic and photonic devices, with particular reference to radio science and telecommunications

was been discussed and approved.

The Commission deals with devices for generation, detection, storage and processing of electromagnetic signals together with their applications, covering all frequencies, including those in the microwave and optical domains.

7. Proposed nominations for URSI Committees

A Committee on Extraterrestrial Solar Power Generation is proposed. Prof. Tatsuo Itoh should represent Commission D in this Committee. Professor Itoh has indicated that he would undertake this task.

8. International Symposium on Signals, Systems and Electronics

Professor Robert Weigel from the University Erlangen-Nürnberg offered to organize the 2004 International Symposium on Signals, Systems, and Electronics (ISSSE'04) in Austria. As conference venue he proposed either Linz (Johannes Kepler University) or Salzburg (Congress Center). The conference duration will be three days. Three parallel Sessions are planned. Both cities have very good accessibility by train and by car. Due to the University infrastructure the conference costs in Linz would be much lower than in Salzburg. The attendees had some preference to Linz but decided to agree with either venue options.

9. Scientific Program of Next General Assembly

The Commission discussed possible topics for the Scientific Program of the next General Assembly. Professor Russer reminded attendees that they should respond to the form "Commission D Suggested Topics for 1999 GA". This form should be sent to Professor Russer (russer@ei.tum.de).

Suggestions should start now and may be made up to 18 months before the next GA. Suggestions made at the business meeting were

• Wide band gap materials (diamond, SiC) for devices at microwave frequencies.
• Micromachined millimeterwave devices.
• Spin state electronics.
• Tutorial on so-called electromagnetic band gap structures.

10. Scientific Program at XXVII URSI General Assembly

The Commission organised seven technical sessions, and co-organised ten additional sessions in cooperation with other Commissions or other Organisations, such as ICO and IWGP. In three of such sessions Commission D was the principal Organiser.

Most of the sessions were very well attended, particularly those covering topics of broad interest, such as MMIC's, wide band gap devices, etc. A few of them were focused on specialized topics, in which case the attendance was somewhat less.

Here is a summary of the technical sessions held during the XXVII General Assembly:

Chairpersons: T. Berceli (Hungary) and H. Ogawa (Japan)

In recent years optical fiber links have gained wider applications in mobile communications, local area and subscriber access networks, television programme distribution, etc. In most cases the optical link is combined with wireless connections. The radio over fiber approach allows for optical transmission of information channels transposed on radio frequency carriers simplifying this wave the optical/wireless interfaces. The session gave a survey on the new device, circuit and system technologies for the radio over fiber approach.

Hiromas ITO (Japan) and Osamu WADA (Japan)

The objective of this session was to examine techniques for the generation, processing and detection of ultra-fast signals in both the time and frequency domains. The topics included quantum well excitons, THz-wave parametric generators, stimulated emission in the THz region and superradiant semiconductor heterolasers.

Chairperson: Le Nguyen Binh (Australia)

Interactions between microwaves and optical waves find application in spectrum analysis of RF signals, guided waves in photonic crystal structures and detection of microwave fields by optical radiation. The topics included photonic spectrum analysis of wideband rf pulsed signals, photonic crystal optical waveguides, so-called photonic band gap structures, and microwave detection in semiconductor structures by optical radiation.

Chairpersons: Pierre-Noël Favennec (France) and Frédérique de Fornel (France)

Nanotechnology processes allow the realisation of new electronic and optical devices and systems; they also allow goal-improved performances for more classical devices. Specific topics included: atomic or molecular deposition, semiconductor microcrystallites in various matrixes, nanolithography, nanoscale processes, nanomanipulation, molecular engineering, nanostructure characterization, novel electronic devices and nanosensors.

Chairperson: Le Nguyen Binh (Australia)

Electro-optic devices are essential for ultra-high speed optical modulation of light waves in optical communications and photonic signal processing systems. Topics included the design and implementation of travelling wave electrodes, noise of mode-locked lasers, electrooptic Mach-Zehnder waveguide modulator design, and electrooptic travelling-wave modulator simulation.

Chairperson: Peter Russer (Germany)

Microelectromechanical systems allow switching and other operations in fast electronic systems to be carried out with remarkably reduced size and circuit parasitics relative to conventional techniques. Ingenious applications in low loss compact optical switching have also been shown to be possible. This session addressed both the technology and the applications of these devices. Topics included rf MEMS switches and high-Q elements, distributed rf-MEMS circuits, electromagnetic modelling of rf MEMS structures and future nanoscale MEMS devices.

Chairperson: Le Nguyen Binh (Australia)

Processing of signals at extremely high radio frequency up to and beyond several hundred GHz is critical for ultra-high speed optical communications and defence systems. Generation, detection, filtering and regeneration of these signals in the time and optical frequency domain by in-line optical guided systems were treated in this session.

Poster Session:

M. Pyée (France)

This session was open to papers in all aspects of electronics and microelectronics materials or components not covered by the other sessions as well as to new results.

Chairpersons: R W. Ziolkowski (D, USA) and Yahya Rahmat-Samii (B, USA)

Electromagnetic band gap (EBG) structures are finite/infinite periodic 1D/2D/3D arrangements of electric or magnetic materials, which produce a band gap in either the temporal or spatial frequency response of that structure. Contributions to this session included transmission lines, filters, coupled cavities and antennas on periodic band-gap structures.

Chairpersons: C. H. Cox (D, USA) and J.M. Payne (J, USA)

Photonics is increasingly being used to perform a variety of roles in radio astronomy instruments. Originally considered only hypothetically as a technology for remoting the antenna signals, photonics has recently moved to the enabling technology for several radio astronomy telescopes. Speakers who are actively engaged in the challenge of implementing these new or upgraded telescopes have contributed to this session, discussing the options they considered, the tradeoffs of the various photonic approaches and the approach they have implemented.

M. Pyée (D, France) and G. Beaudin (J, France)

This session focused on the advancement of the superconductor components as well as on applications. The following topics were covered: Advances in the new high Tc superconductor materials for electronics applications, RSFQ logic circuits, Advances in magnetic fields measurements using SQUIDs, applications in metrology, microwave circuits and receivers for radio-astronomy.

Hideyuki Sotobayashi (Japan)

Professor H. Sotobayashi (Japan) presented an excellent introduction and overview on Photonic Networks based on Optical Code-Division Multiplexing