Caltech is a small private university in Pasadena, California, with an emphasis on science and engineering. There are 200 new undergraduates each year and a similar number of entering graduate students. Despite its size, Caltech students and professors have made an impact on scientific research: they have won 30 Nobel prizes. I will talk about current teaching and research programs in Electrical Engineering at Caltech, including a privately funded initiative in advanced network research, the Lee Center for advanced networking. In addition I will discuss recent results in my research group in new transmitters for wireless communications.

We have demonstrated a single-chip amplifier with a 5-W output at 34GHz. The device uses a quasi-optical array to combine the outputs of 512 gallium-arsenide transistors. The feed for the grid is waveguide mode converter with a TE01 input. The chip was fabricated at the Rockwell Science Center. This chip could have applications for satellite Internet uplinks. Recently, we have built a grid amplifier for the 80-GHz frequency range with Northrop-Grumman's InP technology. At low frequencies in the HF, range, we have demonstrated a new type of switching amplifier called Class E/F that combines the soft-switching characteristics of Class E with the harmonic control of class F. We have used this approach to make an amplifier with an output of 200 W at 7 MHz and a drain efficiency of 83%. At microwave frequencies, we have been concerned with the problem of how to make a high-power transmitter that is suitable for wireless network connections for notebook computers. We have demonstrated Class E/F CMOS amplifiers in the 2-GHz range with output powers greater than 2W and a power-added efficiency of 50%. This work has been done in collaboration with Professor Ali Hajimiri. The design is an active transformer with eight transistors distributed around a single turn. It is a fully-integrated chip with no bond-wire inductors or off-chip components.

Professor Rutledge is the Tomiyasu Professor of Electrical Engineering at Caltech. He is Director of Caltech's Lee Center for Advanced Networking. He received the B.A. in Mathematics from Williams College; the M.A. in Electrical Sciences from Cambridge University; and the Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley. His research has been in integrated-circuit antennas, active quasi-optics, computer-aided design, and high-efficiency power amplifiers. He has won the Microwave Prize, the Distinguished Educator Award of the Microwave Theory and Techniques Society, the Teaching Award of the Associated Students of Caltech, the Doug DeMaw award of the ARRL, the Third Millennium Award of the IEEE, and he is a Fellow of the IEEE. He was an Editor of the Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, and a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society. He is author of the electronics textbook, The Electronics of Radio, published by Cambridge University Press, and co-author of the microwave computer-aided-design software package, Puff, which has sold 30,000 copies.