No matter how many portable information and communications devices an IEEE member might carry (how many chargers are in your ac outlets?), there’s still a need to meet face-to-face. For those who design, make, and use portable devices and their related infrastructures, that time will come in March at the Portable 2007 Conference in Orlando, Fla.

Conferences abound for the various specialties involved in the design of portables. But for portable information devices (PIDs) to be effective, easy to operate, mechanically reliable, and environmentally durable, a lot more is required than just circuit and device design. Also essential are packaging, ergonomics, mechanical and reliability engineering, materials science, a vast variety of software, and various infrastructures to receive, handle, and deliver the information.

Designs that have worked in larger devices may not work in PIDs without at least some degree of rethinking. To begin with, the ergonomic requirements differ—for example, speech interfaces gain importance as keyboard space shrinks—and security is more of an issue in devices that may be more easily lost or stolen.

Portables are also far more likely than desktop devices to be dropped, rained on, or exposed to temperature extremes. Even a user’s pocket can be a harsh environment, subjecting its contents to motion, shock, the salty steam of perspiration, and scratches from such common items as house keys. PIDs’ connectors must be smaller than those of desktops, yet they also have to tolerate frequent connection and disconnection.

Efficiency becomes more of an issue when battery power is involved and fewer cooling options are available. Antenna performance tends to be more limited at all but the highest frequencies. Also, portables may be used in environments rife with electromagnetic interference and in places where the devices themselves generate EMI—which can cause problems.

Portables are now also called upon to handle many more complex functions than before. A cellphone is no longer just a phone. It can be a camera, a PDA, an e-mail reader, a video display, and a navigation system all rolled into one. Yet PIDs—and their control surfaces—keep shrinking.

Solving all the problems calls for such a variety of skills that the broad range of people who design and make PIDs rarely get to meet, mingle, swap ideas, and learn of the constraints each discipline imposes on the others. Hence the need for Portable 2007, the short name for the first International Conference on Portable Information Devices.

Portables handle many more complex functions than ever before. A cellphone can now be a camera, a PDA, a video display, and a navigation system all rolled into one

MULTIPLE SPONSORS The number of IEEE societies sponsoring Portable 2007 illustrates the conference’s interdisciplinary nature. The societies include the Components, Packaging, and Manufacturing Technology Society; the Broadcast Technology Society; the Communications Society; and the Electron Devices Society. Additional technical support is supplied by the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, the Vehicular Technology Society, and the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC).

Heading the list of sponsors is the New Technology Directions Committee of the IEEE Technical Activities Board. The NTDC is devoted to facilitating advances in new and evolving technologies not currently addressed by any single IEEE society or council, points out IEEE Fellow Ephraim Suhir of UCSC, who is general co-chair of Portable 2007 and a member-at-large of the NTDC.

“Until now,” Suhir says, “there has been no single forum for portables, no single place where specialists in different areas could interact. There is tremendous interest, and there are tremendous possibilities in the field, but information is fragmented among various groups, conferences, and publications.”

It was the need to pull together such fragmentation in a number of new fields that led to the NTDC’s formation in 2003 and the organization of Portable 2007.

“We aimed the conference first of all at tech—but also at business-oriented—people who are involved or interested in the state of the art and the future of portable devices,” Suhir says.

CONFERENCE TRIO Portable 2007, which runs from 25 to 27 March, will not take place on its own. Because PIDs are rarely hard-wired into network connections, getting information to and from them commonly requires wireless communications. Therefore, Portable 2007 will run together with two IEEE wireless conferences, also in Orlando.

The Mobile WiMax Symposium is scheduled to run 27 and 28 March and is being sponsored by the IEEE Communications Society. And the IEEE International Symposium on Broadband Multimedia Systems and Broadcasting 2007, sponsored by the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society, is slated for 28 and 29 March. The three events will run in conjunction with the CTIA Wireless conference and will be promoted together as IEEE @ CTIA Wireless. CTIA is an association for the wireless telecommunications industry.

Portable 2007 includes eight half-day tutorials, plus technical sessions and panel discussions. Major topics to be covered are the emerging and disruptive technologies for future PIDs; the future roles of PIDs in medicine and biology; nanotechnologies and PIDs; viral communications; wearable computers; and digital TV. Other topics being considered as program material are wireless technologies, manufacturing issues, signal processing systems (including voice and image recognition), homeland security matters, economics and business problems, and the social impact of current and future PIDs.

To learn more about the International Conference on Portable Information Devices, visit http://www.ieee-portable.org/2007. For more information on IEEE @ CTIA Wireless, visit http://www.comsoc.org/confs/ieee.