Researchers Win Microwave Prize

Researchers in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering will receive the 2010 Microwave Prize from the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society. The award recognizes the most significant paper in the field that has been published in the preceding year in any IEEE publication.

Recipients are NC State’s Jonathan Wilkerson, Dr. Kevin Gard and Dr. Michael Steer, along with collaborator Dr. Alex Schuchinsky of Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland. They were honored for “Electro-Thermal Theory of Intermodulation Distortion in Lossy Microwave Components,” IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, published in December 2008.

The work showed that the underlying limit to the performance of communication systems is signal distortion resulting from electro-thermal effects. The performance of communication systems, as well as of high power radar systems, can be improved through appropriate measures to remove heat and by the choice of materials with particular thermal characteristics. The work was done at NC State with support from the U.S. Army Research Office as a Multi-disciplinary University Research Initiative.