Welcome to MWE 2017

Welcome to the 2017 Microwave Workshops and Exhibition (MWE 2017) which will be held in Pacifico Yokohama for three days from Wednesday, November 29 to Friday, December 1, 2017, under the sponsorship of the IEICE APMC Japan National Committee.

MWE is the largest comprehensive event in Japan for RF/microwave engineers and researchers in academic and governmental institutions as well as private companies and has provided workshops introducing state-of-the-art technologies and future visions, fundamental educational courses for novice/young engineers, and an exhibition of the latest products since 1991.

Utilizing the 2020 Tokyo Olympics as a milestone, innovative values and services have been created based on the factors such as progress in self-driving technologies, expectations for future motorized society, efforts to provide new services using fifth generation (5G) mobile communications systems, and challenges of frontier technologies for the universe. Some of them are about to become familiar this year. In that sense, 2017 will be the opening of a new chapter and it is not too much to say that microwave technologies are of great importance to firmly support this opening from a technical aspect. This is why the keynote concept of MWE 2017 is "Microwave Technology, Road to the Future."

On the basis of this concept, MWE 2017 offers two keynote addresses and thirty workshops in total comprising five fundamental courses and four tutorial/introductory sessions for beginners as well as twenty-one technical sessions.

In the opening ceremony, there are two keynote addresses: the first one entitled "The Latest Radio Frequency Administration in Japan" will be presented by Masatoshi Nozaki (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications) and the second one entitled "VaaSI; Vehicle as a Social Infrastructure" will be presented by Dr. Yuji Inoue (Toyota Info-Technology Co., Ltd.).

In the workshops, twenty-one technical sessions cover the latest microwave technologies from active and passive devices to next generation applications and systems such as 5G mobile communication systems, millimeter-wave/terahertz-wave ICs and automotive/vehicular applications. Fundamental courses and tutorial/introductory sessions give an exposition on microwave technologies from basic points to application examples.

In the Microwave Exhibition, almost five hundred companies from both Japan and overseas together with about thirty universities/colleges will exhibit their new products, technologies and research activities. Some exhibitors will give technical seminars. "MW Cafe" will be also opened to introduce notable microwave system technologies.

We hope that the contents of the workshops and exhibition will be attractive and informative. So please come and enjoy your microwave journey at MWE 2017.

In closing, I would like to express my sincere appreciation to everyone who has been supporting us in organizing MWE 2017.

Shoichi Narahashi
MWE 2017 Steering Committee Chair
(Setsunan Univ.)