This year the 18th edition of the European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP) took place in Glasgow (17th to 22nd March 2024) and was attended by over 1400 delegates, over 40 exhibitors and a number of IET Antennas and Propagation Technical Network (APTN) committee members.

As the IET were Silver sponsors of the event, IET members benefited from a reduction in the registration fee and also received a 20% reduction on IET books using the EUCAP24 code. The IET’s exhibition stand promoted the wider IET, the Microwave and Antennas Propagation (MAP) journal and the Antennas and Propagation Technical Network (APTN).  

As ATPN chair, I was also invited to give a short welcome address at the opening ceremony to promote our aims and 2024 events, which included the EUCAP workshop on “Metrology for 5G and beyond for standards development” and the upcoming CAWE event at ECIT, Belfast (15th May).

EuCAP networking events included a social event for young professionals that enabled them to engage with delegates and speakers from across all career stages, evening receptions and technical visits.

The conference covered frequency bands from KHz to THz and applications from underwater to space. Particular themes of interest for me included:

• ITU Study Group 3 session, which highlighted the importance of propagation work for regulation and basic system design and made a plea for more engagement from academic researchers.
• The first papers I’ve seen at EuCAP presenting quantum computing algorithms for addressing propagation problems (albeit currently running on classical simulators);
• NIST workshop on Rydberg atom based sensing, which outlined the advances and demonstrations conducted at NIST; 
• The wide range of research activities at THz frequencies;
• The increasing number of investigations in exploring the use of machine learning for propagation modelling;
• New techniques being developed to specify the radio environment.

I was also delighted by the diversity of attendees and the animated discussions being held around the poster sessions and the networking events.

I would highly recommend the next conference which is due to be held from 30th March to 4th April 2025 in Stockholm, Sweden.

Anil Shukla APTN Chair.