IFCS-EFTF 2015 News

The 2015 Joint Conference of the IEEE International Frequency Control Symposium & European Frequency and Time Forum (2015 IFCS-EFTF) was held in the Colorado Convention Center (CCC), Denver, CO, US, from April 12-16. The first day (Sunday) featured a whole-day tutorial covering (i) MEMS Oscillators, (ii) Frequency References and Phase Noise, and (iii) M/NEMS, BAW, SAW, Quartz Resonators. The following four days (Monday - Thursday) were the regular sessions including (i) one plenary talk, (ii) 30 regular oral sessions separated into three parallel tracks, and (iii) two poster sessions on Monday and Tuesday. There were overall 417 submitted abstracts in this joint conference where the selected presentations include 160 lectures and 210 posters, among which 16 invited lectures were spread into various sessions.

On Sunday, almost all the tutorial speakers had breakfast together (Fig. 1) and chatted about the upcoming conference events. There were 12 tutorial sessions spread into three parallel tracks covering three major topics mentioned above. Some of the photos taken during the talks (photos in order: Aaron Partridge, Enrico Rubiola, John Vig, Yook-Kong Yong, Ashwin Seshia, Mike Driscoll, Kenja Hashimoto, Troy Olsson, and Matteo Rinaldi) and the break are shown in Fig. 2.

Figure 2: Tutorial sessions and the break.

At the end of Sunday, the Standing Committee members had a meeting (Fig. 3) in Denver Marriott City Center to discuss (i) the update of 2015 IFCS/EFTF, (ii) the status of the IFCS Proceedings and Special Issue of the IEEE T-UFFC, (iii) 2016 IFCS in New Orleans and 2017 EFTF-IFCS in Besançon, and (iv) IFCS Proceedings policy. In particular, the committee greatly appreciated Dr. Andrew Ludlow to lead the IFCS subcommittee on the IFCS Proceedings Policy in the past year, finally yielding a consensus which will be proposed to the ADCOM of the UFFC. This is certainly a tough task which took a long discussion and debate.

Figure 3: Standing Committee meeting on April 12th.

On Monday, the plenary session started with the opening remarks given by the general chair, Dr. Gregory Weaver, as shown in Fig. 4, followed by the awards session. This year, the I.I. Rabi Award goes to Dr. Ulrich L. Rohde (Fig. 5) for his intellectual leadership, selection and measurement of resonator structures for implementation in high-performance frequency sources, essential to the determination of atomic resonance. The W.G. Cady Award goes to Dr. Ajay K. Poddar (Fig. 6) for the analysis, design, and development of a host of frequency control products exhibiting state-of-the-art performance, including the development of extremely low noise crystal oscillator circuitry. The C.B. Sawyer Award goes to Dr. Wan-Thai Hsu (Fig. 7) for co-founding Discera, Inc., and pioneering the development and commercialization of MEMS oscillators.

In the plenary session, Dr. Judah Levine served as the plenary speaker this year and talked about "Distributing Time and Frequency Information: A user's perspective," as shown in Fig. 8. His talk focused on the methods that are used to distribute time and frequency information from the perspective of the end-user, and the capability of each of these methods with specific examples. In the end of the opening session shown in Fig. 9, Dr. Lute Maleki, as General Chair of 2016 IFCS, made an announcement regarding the events and attractions of the next symposium to be held in New Orleans, LA, USA, during May 9-12, 2016.,/p>

Figure 9: Announcement of 2016 IFCS.

On Monday evening, the conference banquet took place at the Wings over the Rockies Air and Space Museum as shown in Fig. 10. The place is a truly historic hangar of the former Lowry Air Force Base, which made this banquet a very special and precious experience to the attendees. The attendees first looked around the flight exhibitions of the museum and then enjoyed the wine and conversation with their families, colleagues, and friends. The banquet dinner was conducted in the centre of the exhibition hall with a local band performing pleasant music.

Figure 11: Banquet dinner and music performance.

On Tuesday morning, the conference offered a special event - the Entrepreneurs Forum. Dr. Wan-Thai Hsu served as the moderator who invited (i) Lute Maleki, Founder, President and CEO of OEwaves, (ii) Aaron Partridge, Chief Scientist of SiTime, (iii) Ulrich Rohde, Chairman of Synergy Microwave, and (iv) Richard Ruby, the pioneer of Avago FBAR technologies. The IFCS-EFTF would take this opportunity to pass the entrepreneurial spirit and experience of the seniors with successful startups and products to the young generations in this community. The panel had a lively discussion as shown in Fig. 12.

Figure 12: Entrepreneurs Forum.

On Tuesday afternoon, as a legend of the oscillator phase noise, Dr. David B. Leeson gave a talk entitled "Oscillator Phase Noise: A 50-year Retrospective," which reviews the derivation of the oscillator phase noise in the past 50 years (Fig. 13). It's a great pleasure for all of us working on oscillators to see Dr. Leeson since most of the studies of the phase noise are based on the Leeson's equation.

Figure 13: Dr. Leeson’s talk on the retrospective of phase noise.

The poster sessions were in the afternoons of Monday and Tuesday, as shown in Fig. 14. The posters of the student paper competition finalists were also displayed in this area and the best paper awards were judged based on the poster presentations on Monday afternoon.

Figure 14: Poster sessions.

On Tuesday evening, the UFFC President, Dr. Jian-yu Lu, hosted the President's Reception in the Marriott City Center Hotel to thank all the contributors to this joint conference, as shown in Fig. 15. Special thank you goes to the Co-general Chairs, Gregory Weaver and Ekkehard Peik, and JTPC Co-chairs, Yoonkee Kim and Gaetano Mileti, for their excellent organization and service in this joint conference.

Figure 15: President’s Reception.

On Wednesday noon, Dr. Elizabeth Donley called for the 1st TPC meeting for the 2016 IFCS, as shown in Fig. 16, to be held in New Orleans next year. The draft of the 2016 IFCS TPC timetable was set and TPCs in different groups were discussing the potential plenary and invited speak list during the meeting.

Figure 16: 1st TPC meeting of IFCS 2016.

In summary, this was a successful conference where we could communicate with the professionals in the frequency control domain and share our latest research results with the experts in the same fields. The technical and social events during the conference were all very nice and the attendees did enjoy this arrangement. We look forward to seeing all of you in the 2016 IFCS at New Orleans in May 9-12. For more information, please visit the official website: http://ifcs2016.org/