Looking back at ARFTG-107
On June 12, 2026, the 107th ARFTG Microwave Measurement Conference once again closed out the International Microwave Symposium — this year at the Westin Boston Seaport, under the theme “Measuring the Future: High-Frequency Metrology for Intelligent, Connected, and Quantum Worlds.” With around 160 attendees, it was the best-attended ARFTG conference in ten years.
Impressions
Conference Highlights
The conference opened Friday morning with NIST’s Nathan D. Orloff and his keynote on “The Evolution of Wafer-Level Metrology” — a walk from the state of the practice to the requirements for SI-traceability at the wafer level: a traceability chain for complex permittivity, a new wafer-level calibration kit with SI-traceable check standards and crosstalk correction to the probe tips, and, as the final hurdle ahead, wafer-level phase traceability.
The keynote was the opener of the first of four sessions, alongside with the Interactive Forum:
Opened with the keynote; from noise-parameter uncertainty software to a four-lab comparison of on-wafer S-parameter measurements up to 220 GHz.
Intelligent Automation for Microwave Measurements
Robotics and machine learning remove the operator from the loop: automated probe landing, nanorobotic probe planarization, ML-calibrated scanning microwave microscopy.
Over-the-Air and Non-Linear Measurements
Time-domain and NPR characterization of power amplifiers, switch-term correction in oscilloscope-based NVNAs, OTA measurements from millimeter-wave to D-band.
On-Wafer Measurements and Calibration
Closed the day where ARFTG began: calibration algorithms, inter-laboratory benchmarks, new material metrology up to 220 GHz.
Interactive Forum · Poster Session
Six posters in a discussion-driven format — de-embedding, noise measurement uncertainties, cryogenic noise parameters, and new probe, sensing, and material concepts.
ARFTG-107 Awards: Official voting results
At each conference, we ask our visitors to vote for the best contributions from a packed program. What surprised us this time: four of the seven winning papers are student papers. The next generation is setting the pace.
Congratulations to all ARFTG-107 award winners!
ARFTG Luncheon
The Awards Luncheon is held at every ARFTG conference; it is where the previous edition’s awards are formally presented. In Boston, ARFTG President Patrick Roblin and Awards Chair Dave Blackham presented the 106th ARFTG Conference Awards.
The luncheon also honored this year’s Roger Pollard Fellowship Award recipients:
- Thomas Bonnen (Michigan State University, Gold),
- Simon Wasser (Graz University of Technology, Silver), and
- Alicia Westphal (Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg, Silver).
The luncheon agenda closed with General Chair Andrej Rumiantsev presenting the ongoing project to rebuild the next-generation ARFTG website.
On the exhitbit floor
Thirteen companies exhibited alongside the technical program, running fifteen tables across the two exhibit breaks:
Around the conference
ARFTG’s week in Boston ran wider than the conference day — workshops, standards meetings, the Users Forums, and two ARFTG ExCom Meetings (Pre-Conf: Thursday, June 11; Post-Conf: Friday, June 12) all took place across International Microwave Week.
Full House at the Users’ Forums
Both ARFTG Users Forums ran on Thursday, June 11, each a focused venue for its own measurement community.
The NVNA Users’ Forum, chaired by Patrick Roblin (Ohio State University), focused on nonlinear vector network analysis. Its talks covered W-band vector-calibrated active load-pull measurements and advanced time-domain techniques for nonlinear device measurement, from track-and-hold receivers to pumped diode detectors.
The 24th On-Wafer Users’ Forum was certainly one of the highlights of the week in Boston: chaired by Gia Ngoc Phung (PTB, Germany), it drew 48 participants from industry, metrology institutes, and academia.
It brought together three complementary talks from Ziad Hatab (Keysight Technologies), James Skinner (NPL), and Shuhei Amakawa (Hiroshima University). Together, they traced a single thread from the mathematics of multiline TRL calibration through its implementation to the interpretation of the de-embedded result. The talks sparked a lively discussion among the participants, reflecting the community’s interest in the rigor and reproducibility of wafer-level calibration.
ARFTG/IMS Workshops
ARFTG — together with its IMS partner committees RFSA and RFTT — co-sponsored four workshops across IMS-2026. Topics spanned from wafer-level sub-THz calibration, through phase and over-the-air measurement, to microwave measurements for quantum hardware.
IEEE Standards Working Group Meetings
ARFTG — together with its IMS partner committees RFSA and RFTT — co-sponsored four workshops across IMS-2026. Topics spanned from wafer-level sub-THz calibration, through phase and over-the-air measurement, to microwave measurements for quantum hardware.
Save the Date
Looking ahead: ARFTG-108 takes on space
As I close out this conference, let me point you toward the next one: the 108th ARFTG Microwave Measurement Conference from January 17–20, 2027 in Tampa, FL, co-located with Radio & Wireless Week 2027 and dedicated to the topic:
“Microwave Measurement Challenges for Space and Satellite Systems”
In Tampa, the ARFTG-107 award winners will be formally recognized at the ARFTG-108 Awards Luncheon — so there’s one more reason to be there.
The Call for Papers is now open, with abstracts due September 11, 2026. If your work touches measurement for non-terrestrial communication, space-based sensing, OTA characterization for satellite applications, or testing under space environmental conditions, this is the room where you want to present it.
I wish the whole ARFTG-108 team every success:
- Conference Chair Mauro Marchetti (Maury Microwave),
- Conference Co-Chair Chong Li (University of Glasgow),
- TPC Chair Gian Piero Gibiino (University of Bologna), and
- TPC Co-Chair Gia Ngoc Phung (PTB).
A conference like this is carried by many hands. My thanks go to my co-chairs — General Co-Chair Dennis Lewis (Boeing), Technical Program Co-Chairs Gia Ngoc Phung (PTB) and Xiaobang Shang (NPL) — to the session chairs and reviewers, to our sponsors and exhibitors, and to everyone who presented, voted, and argued about measurements until the room was cleared. See you all again in Tampa!
Andrej Rumiantsev
GENERAL CHAIR, 107TH ARFTG MICROWAVE MEASUREMENT CONFERENCE
ARFTG SECRETARY
