1046 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 50, NO. 3, MARCH 2002 Microwaves in the Asia–Pacific Region Eikichi Yamashita, Life Fellow, IEEE, Trevor S. Bird, Fellow, IEEE, Zhenghe Feng, Member, IEEE, Bharathi Bhat, Senior Member, IEEE, Masami Akaike, Fellow, IEEE, Jung-Woong Ra, Member, IEEE, Mook Seng Leong, Senior Member, IEEE, Monai Krairiksh, Member, IEEE, and Song Tsueng Peng, Fellow, IEEE Invited Paper Abstract—Infrastructure elements to produce microwave en- gineers and to promote microwave research and development in the Asia–Pacific region are described by active professors and re- searchers in this area as a multiauthor forum. The content of each description focuses mainly on the role of present-day universities, government, and industry. Index Terms—APMC, Asia–Pacific, Australia, China, govern- ment, India, industry, infrastructure, Japan, Korea, microwave, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, university. I. INTRODUCTION I NTERNATIONAL conferences are typical and very ef- fective forums for microwave engineers worldwide to present the new results of their research and to exchange their ideas. The Asia–Pacific Microwave Conference (APMC), cooperatively sponsored by the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (IEEE MTT-S), has been the most influential international conference on microwave engineering in the Asia–Pacific region for the past decade. It has been held in New Delhi, India (1986), Beijing, China (1988), Tokyo, Japan (1990), Adelaide, Australia (1992), Hsinchu, Taiwan (1993), Tokyo, Japan (1994), Seoul, Korea (1995), New Delhi, India (1996), Hong Kong (1997), Yokohama, Japan (1998), Singapore (1999), and Sydney, Australia (2000). Future APMC Manuscript received August 10, 2001. E. Yamashita, retired, was with the University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo 182-8585, Japan. He is now at 2-49-3 Mejirodai, Hachiohji, Tokyo 193- 0833, Japan. T. S. Bird is with Telecommunications and Industrial Physics, Common- wealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, Epping, N.S.W. 1710, Australia (e-mail: trevor.bird@tip.csiro.au). Z. Feng is with the Department of Electronics Engineering, Tsinghua Uni- versity, Beijing 100084, China (e-mail: fzh-dee@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn). B. Bhat is with the Center for Applied Research in Electronics, Indian Insti- tute of Technology, New Delhi 110016, India (e-mail: bbhat@care.iitd.ernet.in). M. Akaike is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Science Univer- sity of Tokyo, Tokyo 162-0825, Japan (e-mail: akaike@ee.kagu.sut.ac.jp). J.-W. Ra is with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sci- ence, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Taejon 305-701, Korea (e-mail: rawong@ee.kaist.ac.kr). M. S. Leong is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, National Uni- versity of Singapore, Singapore 119260 (e-mail: elelms@nus.edu.sg). M. Krairiksh is with the Faculty of Engineering, King Mongkut’s In- stitute of Technology Ladkrabang, Bangkok 10520, Thailand (e-mail: kkmonai@kmitl.ac.th). S. T. Peng is with the Department of Communication Engineering, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan, R.O.C. (e-mail: stpeng@cc.nctu.edu.tw). Publisher Item Identifier S 0018-9480(02)01978-6. host cities, including Bangkok, Thailand, as a new member, have already been named by the APMC International Steering Committee beginning with Taipei, Taiwan, in 2001 and then ten cities up to Sydney, Australia, in 2011. Since these conferences have been well organized by do- mestic institute members, local IEEE Sections and IEEE MTT-S chapter members, with the assistance of university and industry organizations, each APMC organizer should be well qualified to describe the status of microwave activities in education, govern- ment, and industry in his or her country for this TRANSACTIONS. Approximately one page allocated for each author is hardy enough to do justice to all that is going on in microwave activ- ities. Readers who require further information or references on a particular area of the Asia–Pacific Region are recommended to get in touch with the appropriate author by using their office e-mail addresses. E. Yamashita II. MICROWAVE INFRASTRUCTURE IN AUSTRALIA A. Background According to Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) figures (1999), as a proportion of GDP, Australia is the third highest in terms of investment on ma- chinery and equipment; however, it lags behind most countries in its investment in knowledge (Japan has a similar profile). Further, business research and development (R&D) intensity is below the OECD average and this reflects Australia’s current industrial infrastructure, which is small on a world scale. The Australian R&D infrastructure is dominated by the activities in the university and government sectors, where the government funds approximately one-half of all R&D. Of this funding of about US$2 billion, approximately 50% goes to fund higher education, another 20% goes to the Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), a government research body, and the remainder goes to other federal agen- cies such as the Defence Science and Technology Organization (DSTO) or to state government agencies. Government expen- diture on R&D is not spread uniformly across all fields of re- search. On information and communications technologies (ICT) areas, where the Australian microwave infrastructure is mainly found, R&D expenditure is only about 5% of the total. Currently, the strongest activities in microwaves in Australia are in antennas, microwave photonics, device modeling and de- 0018–9480/02$17.00 © 2002 IEEE