EMC 2016 featured Dr. Robert Scully, NASA Johnson Space Lab, kicking off the plenary session with his light hearted talk, “EMC in 2016 and Beyond: What Is It and Why Do We Care?”. As the IEEE EMC is an international organization, they periodically hold EMC outside of the US so traveled to Ottawa, Canada this year. 

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler laid out his proposal for 5G spectrum allocation that he hopes will be approved by Congress on July 14. It is a comprehensive plan to designate spectrum in the low frequency bands, develop more mid-band frequencies in the crowed areas currently used and a gives specific focus to high frequency bands in the mmWave range. He stated that we will be the first in the world to approve these types of measures if Congress gives their approval next month. 

It was fun meeting Chiphead for the first time at DesignCon 2016. The event covers areas such as PCB design tools, power and signal integrity, jitter and crosstalk, high-speed serial design, test and measurement tools, parallel and memory interface design, ICs, semiconductor components and more. The test/measurement, software and connector companies dominate the exhibition. As the speed of digital electronics has increased, the techniques and methods for digital and RF/microwave design have converged so it was interesting to see the similarities between the two worlds.