Participating to the Network of Excellence TARGET

The department ELEC of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) initiated in 1990 the development of a microwave nonlinear network analyser in collaboration with the company Hewlett-Packard. Nowadays, 10 prototypes of such an instrument exist all over the world. The publication record of Dept. ELEC shows that it kept his leading position and is still developing the applicability of the measurement principle and the instrument to a broader range of microwave circuits, like: on-wafer circuits, mixers, load-pull, pulse-mode, …
These developements have brought the Dept. ELEC to set up a collaboration with the Dept. DESICS of IMEC and to create with almost all concerned European research centre a Network of Excellence, namely the NoE TARGET (see http//www.target-net.org). Consequently, Dept. ELEC attracted 5 researchers to work on the characterisation of on-wafer microwave circuits: let us mention Mrs. Wendy Van Moer (Doctor Assistent), Mrs. Charlotte Soens (Aspirant IWT) and Mr. Daan Rabijns (Aspirant IWT), Mr. Dimitri Linten (Aspirant IWT) and Mr. Ludwig De Locht (Aspirant IWT). The ELEC research project has been integrally incorporated into the NoE TARGET and formulated as design of RF SSPA's (Radio Frequency Solid State Power Amplifier's) where the microwave nonlinear network analyser plays an important role. The NoE project represents for Dept. ELEC a prestigious contract but at the same time a lot of obligations. ELEC has promised to perform scientific work (in our case measurements) for the TARGET consortium. It consists of two parts: we have to keep our instruments operational and adapt it to the common measurement objects and we have to supply enough personnel for performing the measurements. The financial input of the 6-th Framework to the NoE TARGET covers essentially the costs for the meetings.