IEEE Spectrum April, 2008 - 5

forum
GPS À LA CARTE

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THE E-JOURNAL
IS HERE

the paper should be
published in the free
online journal, which is
financed through moderate author charges.

aving read
"Technical
Publications and the
Richard Sietmann
Internet" [Reflections,
IEEE Member
January], I note that
Berlin
real-life examples exist
that support Robert W.
ON THE
Lucky's vision of qualRECEIVING END
ity assurance for techour article on
nical publications on
wireless devices
the Internet, such as
using the 60-gigahertz
Atmospheric Chemistry
portion of the specand Physics (ACP) (http:// trum ["Gadgets Gab at
www.atmos-chem-phys.
60 GHz," February] was
net), published by the
very informative regardEuropean Geosciences
ing the transceiver
Union since 2001.
technologies under
Manuscripts are first
development at these
published as "discussion frequencies. However,
papers" on the journal's
your characterization of
Web site, where for a
the 57- to 64-GHz porperiod of eight weeks
tion of the spectrum as
referees (who may
"unlicensed" is inaccuremain anonymous) and
rate. Both the U.S. freother members of the
quency allocation chart
scientific community
and the International
can post their comments. Telecommunication
The editor then weighs
Union regulations show
the referees' comments
allocations in this freand decides whether
quency range for sev-

NA * iEEE SpEctrum * April 2008

double fréquence" for vegetarians and
"sO à la triple fréquence" for gourmets.
the european advocates of this second
"restaurant" do not intend to take away
gaston's business (the Hdr is gratis!);
they want only to improve their diet.
Francisco Cancillo, IEEE Member, Madrid

Senior Editor William Sweet responds:
being a tech gourmet, in my future trips
to europe i will indeed look forward to
using galileo's special "open service at
triple frequency." but i don't expect such
premium services to ever pay for galileo,
and nor do galileo's own backers. that's
partly because it's only a matter of time
till the chinese restaurant next door
offers such special geopositioning services. this is why galileo does not make
sense as a business proposition and
needs to be radically reconceived.

eral important services,
including the Earth
Exploration Satellite
Service (57 to 59.3 GHz).
The service is particularly sensitive to interference, given the use of
passive microwave sensing at these frequencies
for measuring atmospheric temperature
information. Such measurements are enabled
by the strong absorption
of atmospheric oxygen
in this frequency range.

BUILD YOUR OWN
DREAm AmP

eaders of your
Dream Jobs article
on Bruno Putzeys and
his Class-D amplifiers
may be interested to
know that they can learn
how to build their own
UcD at http://www.nxp.
com/acrobat_download/
usermanuals/
UM10155_2.pdf.
Ken Mardle
Auckland, New Zealand

Joel T. Johnson
Columbus, Ohio

CORRECTIONS
In the Dream Jobs profile of Mark Schubin [February],
the "Fun Factors" caption should have put Tromsø,
Norway, 400 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle.
Due to space considerations, Davide Pandini's quote
in "The Ultimate Dielectric Is...Nothing" [January] was
truncated. Pandini contended that although IBM's Air Gap
technology research is promising, "perhaps comparable performance improvements could be achieved with mainstream
interconnect technology by focusing the design efforts on
new interconnect structures and on-chip communication
paradigms, without changing the manufacturing process."
www.spectrum.ieee.org

bryan christie design

egarding "no payoff for galileo
navigation system" [January]: to
continue with the restaurant metaphor, there may be many europeans
who think that, instead of being invited
to "chez gaston" (the u.s. global
positioning system), they are merely
getting a humanitarian daily ration
(Hdr) from the u.s. department of
defense, intended only to provide sustenance to a moderately malnourished
individual-useful for surviving but not
for satisfying europe's current demands.
promoters of the european geopositioning system (europe's own "French
restaurant in new York") intend to offer
a wide menu for all tastes, including
"service ouvert à la fréquence unique"
(open service at a single frequency,
similar to the Hdr) but also "sO à la

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum April, 2008