The 11th of European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP) was held from the 19th to the 24th of March 2017 in Paris, France. It was attended by 1302 delegates, who had access to 950 technical papers, including invited talks, oral sessions, and posters. EuCAP is organized by the European Association on Antennas and Propagation (EurAAP), which was created in the frame of the European Network of Excellence “ACE – Antenna Centre of Excellence” (visit www.euraap.org), as a means of scientific communication and exchange for the European Antenna and Propagation Scientific Community.
For the second time, the International Journal of Microwave and Wireless Technologies dedicates a special issue to EuCAP, featuring extended versions of the papers rated by the reviewers and the EurAAP publications committee as especially relevant and interesting for EuMA and the readers of the IJMWT. The authors were invited to expand their conference contributions. The submitted papers went through a new review process, to warrantee high quality and, hopefully, attract the interest of the readers to the rest of the EuCAP contributions.
Indeed, although EuCAP deals mostly with antenna technologies, it has a lot of common points with microwaves as covered by EuMA and the IJMWT. Since its creation, EurAAP has received invaluable support and advice from EuMA, its older, larger sister society. The cooperation of both societies, defined in the common memorandum of understanding, is now over a decade old, and showing good health. These special issues on EuCAP are part of the cooperation agreements. On behalf of EurAAP, I would like to convey to EuMA and the IJMWT our sincere gratitude for the good cooperation.
With this special issue, EurAAP wishes to strengthen the bond with EuMA, and share with its members and all readers of the IJMWT the exciting developments in the fields of antennas, propagation, and electromagnetic theory, as presented at EuCAP. We hope that this may be the seed for further common endeavors between the antennas & propagation and the microwaves community.
Finally, I would like to thank the Editor in Chief of IJMWT, the authors, the reviewers, and all that have made this issue possible. I hope you will enjoy it!
Marta Martínez-Vázquez (FIEEE, 2017) was born in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, in 1973. She obtained her M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Telecommunication Engineering from the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain, in 1997 and 2003, respectively. In 1999, she was granted a fellowship from the Pedro Barrié de la Maza Foundation for postgraduate research at IMST GmbH, in Germany. In 2000, she joined the Antennas and EM Modelling Department of IMST as full-time staff member. She works now there as a Senior Engineer and Project Manager.
Her research interests include the design and applications of antennas for mobile devices, planar arrays, sensors, and RF systems.
She has been the chair of the COST IC1102 Action “Versatile, Integrated and Signal-aware Technologies for Antennas (VISTA) and the Vice-Chair of the COST IC0603 Action “Antenna Sensors and Systems for Information Society Technologies”. She was also involved as expert in the COST Action 260 “Smart Antennas” and as a working group leader in COST 284 “Innovative Antennas for Emerging Terrestrial & Space-Based Applications”. Previously, she was a member of the Executive Board of the ACE (Antennas Centre of Excellence) Network of Excellence and the leader of its small antennas activity.
Dr. Martínez-Vázquez is currently the Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors of the European Association of Antennas and Propagation (EurAAP). She is a member of the Technical Advisory Panel for the Antennas and Propagation Professional Network of IET and of the IEEE AP-S Education Committee. She is also a former member of the Administrative Committee of the IEEE Antennas & Propagation Society and served as a Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE AP-S.
She is one of the Editors of the IEEE Antennas & Propagation Magazine and an Associate Editor of the IET Microwaves, Antennas & Propagation Journal. She has over 90 publications, including books, book chapters, journal and conference papers, and patents.
She has been awarded the 2004 Best Ph.D. award of the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia for her dissertation on small multiband antennas for handheld terminals, and the 2013 IEEE AP-S Lot Shafai Mid-Career Distinguished Achievement Award.
