What Are IEEE Microwave and Guided Wave Letters?

IEEE Microwave and Guided Wave Letters are the peer-reviewed rapid communications published by the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S), devoted to brief contributions on advances in microwave and guided wave technology. It published short papers, typically limited to two to four pages, covering new experimental results, component designs, and theoretical developments in the frequency range spanning microwave through millimeter-wave bands. The journal served researchers and engineers working on passive and active microwave devices, transmission line structures, antennas, and electromagnetic propagation in guided media.

The journal operated from 1991 and published monthly issues through its run before being succeeded by the IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters, which expanded the scope to include wireless technology topics while retaining the letters format and the rapid-turnaround publication model.

Publication History and Scope

IEEE Microwave and Guided Wave Letters was established to meet the need for faster dissemination of microwave research than the IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, the field's primary archival journal, could provide. The letters format, with its strict page limit and expedited review process, allowed researchers to share experimental device measurements, novel circuit topologies, and preliminary theoretical results within weeks of submission acceptance. The journal's archive on IEEE Xplore covers the full run of issues and remains a reference resource for microwave researchers tracking the development of component designs from the 1990s through the early 2000s.

The scope encompassed guided wave structures including microstrip, coplanar waveguide, stripline, rectangular and circular waveguides, dielectric waveguides, and finline. Contributions addressed both the fundamental propagation characteristics of these structures and their application in filters, couplers, power dividers, amplifiers, oscillators, mixers, and phased-array feed networks.

Technical Coverage

The journal regularly published contributions on semiconductor microwave devices, including GaAs and silicon-based transistors operating in the microwave and millimeter-wave frequency range, as well as ferrite devices and resonator-based components. MMIC (Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit) design occupied a significant share of the content, reflecting the accelerating transition from discrete-component designs to integrated circuit implementations that characterized the field through the 1990s.

Computational electromagnetics methods applied to guided wave structures also appeared frequently, with papers reporting finite-element, method-of-moments, and mode-matching analyses of discontinuities, junctions, and transitions between different transmission line types. These computational results complemented the experimental device papers and supported the design community's growing reliance on simulation in the development process.

Format and Transition to Wireless Components Letters

The letters format of the journal required concise presentation: authors were expected to make their contribution clear within the page limit, with limited introductory context and direct reporting of results. This compression favored experienced researchers with targeted incremental contributions over broad surveys or extended tutorial treatments. When the journal transitioned into the IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters in 2001, the format constraints were preserved while the topical scope was widened to include the wireless system design themes that had grown in research prominence during the late 1990s.

Applications

The research published in IEEE Microwave and Guided Wave Letters addressed design problems in a range of fields, including:

• Wireless base station and satellite communication hardware
• Radar and electronic warfare component development
• Medical imaging systems operating at microwave frequencies
• Automobile and aircraft navigation and sensing systems
• Millimeter-wave test and measurement instrumentation