PROJECT OVERVIEW

The research consists of the following five projects - High Efficiency Power Amplifiers and Transmitters for 5G and 6G Applications, Digital PLLs with Sub-100 fs jitter for Local Oscillator Frequency Synthesis, Powering and Communicating with the Internet-of-(Medical)-Things (IoMT), Low-Power mm-wave Circuits for Efficient Mobile Systems Beyond 5G and Directional Antennas using Phased-Arrays for 6G. The projects are separate but are related in that they will develop critical circuits for 5G and future-generation wireless applications. The projects are out-lined briefly in full overview (linked below) of Circuits and Techniques for 5G Mobile Communications and Beyond.

FULL OVERVIEW

High Efficiency Integrated Power Supply Modulators for sub-6GHz 5G Transmitters

Circuits

High Efficiency Integrated Power Supply Modulators for sub-6GHz 5G Transmitters

Principal Investigator
Hanh-Phuc Le

Power supply modulators are critical components for the implementation of mm-wave and sub-6GHz 5G systems, especially the base-stations.  In addition to high power and efficiency, good linearity and compact size are required, since front-end electronics must be scaled down to sizes of a medium pizza-box size for massive MIMO for sub-6GHz remote radio heads. Toward these goals, having a fast and efficient power converter for envelop tracking to improve the efficiency of the transmitters proves to be critical for the system’s development, sustainability, and scalability. 

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An Energy Efficient 5G LNA Exploiting Current Reuse

Circuits

An Energy Efficient 5G LNA Exploiting Current Reuse

Principal Investigator
Drew Hall

With the surge in IoT applications and the fast proliferation of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) receivers, the need for low power RF front-ends has grown significantly over the past several years. Low noise amplifiers (LNAs) with low noise figures are extremely important in such systems. Similarly, power is important in all mobile applications. 

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High Efficiency Power Amplifiers for 5G and 6G Millimeter-Wave Applications

Circuits

High Efficiency Power Amplifiers for 5G and 6G Millimeter-Wave Applications

Principal Investigator
Peter Asbeck

Power amplifier performance continues to be an important issue for mm-wave 5G and 6G system design and deployment.  This project will investigate techniques for improving maximum power, back-off efficiency and linearity in power amplifiers for 5G and 6G, with target frequencies including 28 GHz, 70-90 GHz and 140 GHz.  The investigation will include CMOS-SOI, SiGe HBT, GaN FET and InP HBT technologies, benchmarking circuits by simulation and supported with IC fabrication where appropriate.

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Low-Power RF LO-free Receivers for 5G/6G, WiFi 6/7, and IoT Applications

Circuits

Low-Power RF LO-free Receivers for 5G/6G, WiFi 6/7, and IoT Applications

Principal Investigator
Patrick Mercier

RF LO generation is starting to become a real power consumption bottleneck in high-performance 5G/WiFi systems that are pushing 1024- and 4096-QAM. Surprisingly, the power consumption of RF LO generation is also dominating lower-power applications like NB-IoT due to strict reciprocal mixing specifications resulting from operation in congested spectral environments.

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Adaptive Cancellation of Dynamic Error in High-Resolution RF DACs

Circuits

Adaptive Cancellation of Dynamic Error in High-Resolution RF DACs

Principal Investigator
Ian Galton

The most significant sources of both static and dynamic nonlinear error in practical high-speed, high-resolution, continuous-time RF DACs are clock skew, component mismatches, and inter-symbol interference (ISI). Most published digital calibration techniques aimed at addressing these issues are only capable of reducing the static portion of such error, which leaves dynamic error as a major limitation. Techniques such as return-to-zero (RZ) signaling can be used to mitigate ISI, but they generally have undesirable side effects, such as halving the signal power and significantly increasing sensitivity to clock jitter, which greatly increase power consumption and/or decrease signal-to-noise-and-distortion ratio (SNDR).

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Publications
  • O. El-Aassar and G. M. Rebeiz, "A 120-GHz Bandwidth CMOS Distributed Power Amplifier With Multi-Drive Intra-Stack Coupling," in IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters, vol. 30, no. 8, pp. 782-785, Aug. 2020 See Full Publication
  • R. R. Pote, B. D. Rao, "A Novel Bayesian Approach for the Two-Dimensional Harmonic Retrieval Problem," 2021 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP). See Full Publication
  • R. R. Pote, B. D. Rao, "A Novel Bayesian Approach for the Two-Dimensional Harmonic Retrieval Problem," 2021 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP). See Full Publication
  • G. R. Gopal, G. P. Villardi, and B. D. Rao, “Is vector quantization good enough for access point placement?” in Proc. 2021 55th Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers, Nov. 2021.
  • E. Alvarez-Fontecilla, E. Helal, A. I. Eissa, and I. Galton, “Spectral Breathing and its Mitigation in Digital Fractional-N PLLs,” IEEE Journal of Solid State- Circuits, vol. 56, no. 10, pp. 3191-3201, Oct. 2021, doi: 10.1109/JSSC.2021.3074814. See Full Publication
  • E. Helal, E. Alvarez-Fontecilla, A. I. Eissa, and I. Galton, “A Time Amplifier Assisted Frequency-to-Digital Converter Based Digital Fractional- N PLL,” IEEE Journal of Solid State-Circuits, vol. 56, no.9, pp. 2711-2723, Sept. 2021. See Full Publication
  • G. R. Gopal, B. D. Rao, and G. P. Villardi, "Access point placement for hybrid UAV-terrestrial small-cell networks" IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society, vol.2, pp. 1826–1841, July 2021 See Full Publication
  • Sant, A., Leinonen, M. and Rao, B.D., 2021, June. General Total Variation Regularized Sparse Bayesian Learning for Robust Block-Sparse Signal Recovery. In ICASSP 2021-2021 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP) (pp. 5604-5608). IEEE. See Full Publication
  • Corentin Pochet, Haowei Jiang, and Drew A. Hall, “Ultra-Low Leakage ESD Protection Achieving 10.5 fA Leakage,” IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS), Daegu, South Korea, May 22-28, 2021. See Full Publication
  • M. Dunna, M. Meng, P.-H. Wang, C. Zhang, P. Mercier, D. Bharadia, “SyncScatter: Enabling WiFi like synchronization and range for WiFi backscatter Communication,” Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI), pp. 923-937, Apr. 2021. See Full Publication
  • A. Nikoofard, H. Abbasi Zadeh, P.P. Mercier, “A 0.6-mW 116-FSK Receiver Achieving a Sensitivity of -103 dBm at 100 kb/s,” IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, vol. 56, no. 4, pp. 1299-1309, Apr. 2021. See Full Publication
  • P-H. P. Wang, P.P. Mercier, “A Dual-Mode Wi-Fi/BLE Wake-up Receiver,” IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, vol. 56, no. 4, pp. 1288-1298, Apr. 2021. See Full Publication
  • E. Alvarez-Fontecilla, A. I. Eissa, E. Helal, C. Weltin-Wu and I. Galton, “Delta-Sigma FDC Enhancements for FDC-Based Digital Fractional- N PLLs,” IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers, vol. 68, no. 3, pp. 965-974, March 2021. See Full Publication
  • S.-K. Kuo, M. Dunna, D. Bharadia, P.P. Mercier, “A WiFi and Bluetooth Backscattering Combo Chip Featuring Beam Steering via a Fully-Reflective Phased-Controlled Multi-Antenna Termination Technique Enabling Operation Over 56 Meters,” in Proc. IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), Feb. 2022.
  • Somok Mondal, Omid Ghadami, and Drew A. Hall, “A 139μW 104.8dB-DR 24kHz- BW CTΔΣM with Chopped AC-coupled OTA-Stacking and FIR DACs,” IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), San Francisco, CA, Feb. 13-
    22, 2021. See Full Publication
  • A. Abdulsalm, P.P. Mercier, “A 98.2%-Efficiency Reciprocal Direct Charge Recycling Inductor-First DC-DC Converter,” in Proc. IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), Feb. 2021.
  • J. Huang, P.P. Mercier, “A Distortion-Free VCO-based Sensor-to-Digital Front-end Achieving 178.9-dB FoM and 128-dB SFDR with a Calibration-Free Differential Pulse Code Modulation Technique,” in Proc. IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), Feb. 2021.
  • M. Meng, M. Dunna, H. Yu, S. Kuo, D. Bharadia, P.P. Mercier, “Improving the Range of Wi-Fi Backscatter via a Passive Retro-Reflective Single-Side-Band-Modulating MIMO Array and Non-Absorbing Termination,” in Proc. IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), Feb. 2021.
  • C. Pochet, J. Huang, P.P. Mercier, D.A. Hall, “A 400mVpp, 92.3 dB-SNDR, 1kHz-BW, 2nd-order VCO-based ExG-to-Digital Front-End Using a Multiphase Gated-Inverted Ring-Oscillator Quantizer,” in Proc. IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), Feb. 2021.
  • A. Akinin, J. Ford, J. Wu, C. Kim, H. Thacker, P.P. Mercier, G.C. Cauwenberghs, “An Optically-Addressed Nanowire-Based Retinal Prosthesis with 73% RF-to-Stimulation Power Efficiency and 20nC-3uC Wireless Charge Telemetering,” in Proc. IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), Feb. 2021.
  • Somok Mondal and Drew A. Hall, “A 67-μW Ultra-Low Power PVT-Robust MedRadio Transmitter,” IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium (RFIC), Los Angeles, CA, June 21-26, 2020. See Full Publication
  • Haowei Jiang, Po-Han Peter Wang, Li Gao, Corentin Pochet, Gabriel M. Rebeiz, Drew A. Hall, and Patrick P. Mercier, “A 22.3 nW, 4.55 cm2 Temperature-Robust Wake-up Receiver Achieving a Sensitivity of -69.5 dBm at 9 GHz,” IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits (JSSC), vol. 55, no. 6, Jun. 2020. See Full Publication    
  • Somok Mondal and Drew A. Hall, “A 13.9-nA ECG Amplifier Achieving 0.86/0.99 NEF/PEF Using AC-coupled OTA-Stacking,” IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits (JSSC), vol. 55, no. 2, Feb. 2020. See Full Publication
  • P.-H. Wang, C. Zhang, H. Yang, D. Bharadia, P.P. Mercier, “A 28μW IoT Tag That Can Communicate with Commodity WiFi Transceivers via a Single-Side-Band QPSK Backscatter Communication Technique,” in Proc. IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), Feb. 2020.
  • R. R. Pote and B. D. Rao, "Reduced Dimension Beamspace Design Forming Nested Array for mmWave Channel Estimation", 53rd Annual Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers, Nov. 3-6, 2019
  • G. R. Gopal and B.D. Rao, “Throughput and Delay Driven Access Point Placement”, 53rd Annual Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers, November 3 - 6, 2019
  • H. Jiang, P-H. Wang, L. Gao, C. Pochet, G. M. Rebeiz, D.A. Hall, and P. P. Mercier, “A 22.3 nW, 4.55 cm2 Temperature-Robust Wake-up Receiver Achieving a Sensitivity of -69.5 dBm at 9 GHz,” IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits (JSSC), November 2019. See Full Publication
  • J. Park, P.P. Mercier, “A sub-10pJ/bit 5Mbps Magnetic Human Body Communication Transceiver,” IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, vol. 54, no. 11, pp. 3031-3042, Nov. 2019. See Full Publication
  • C. Kim, J. Park, S. Ha, A. Akinin, R. Kubendran, P.P. Mercier, G.C. Cauwenberghs, “A 3 mm × 3 mm Fully Integrated Wireless Power Receiver and Neural Interface System-on-Chip” IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems, Oct. 2019. See Full Publication
  • J. Warchall, P. Theilmann, Y. Ouyang, H. Garudadri, P. Mercier, “Robust Biopotential Acquisition via a Distributed Multi-Channel FM-ADC,” IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems, Sep. 2019. See Full Publication
  • A. Abdulslam, P.P. Mercier, “A Passive-Stacked Third-Order Buck Converter with Inherent Input Filtering Achieving 0.7 W/mm2 Power Density and 94% Peak Efficiency,” IEEE Solid-State Circuits Letters, Aug. 2019. See Full Publication
  • H. Wang, P.P. Mercier, “A 763 pW 230 pJ/conversion Fully-Integrated CMOS Temperature-to-Digital Converter with +0.81/-0.75°C Inaccuracy,” IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, vol. 54, no. 8, pp. 2281-2290, Aug. 2019. See Full Publication
  • Y.Yin, S. Zihir, T. Kanar, and G. M. Rebeiz, "A 37-42 GHz 8x8 Phased-Array for 5G Communication Systems with 48-50 dBm EIRP," IEEE Int. Microwave Symposium, Boston, MA, June 2019. See Full Publication
  • Haowei Jiang, Chih-Cheng Huang, Matthew Chan, and Drew A. Hall, “A 2-in-1 Temperature and Humidity Sensor Achieving 62 fJ·K2 and 0.83 pJ·(%RH)2,” IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC), Austin, TX, Apr. 14-17, 2019. See Full Publication
  • Somok Mondal and Drew A. Hall, “A 107 μW MedRadio Injection-Locked Clock Multiplier with a CTAT-biased 126 ppm/°C Ring Oscillator,” IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC), Austin, TX, Apr. 14-17, 2019. See Full Publication
  • C.S. Levy, T.W. Kornack, P.P. Mercier, “Bell-Bloom Magnetometer Linearization by Intensity Modulation Cancellation,” IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurements, Apr. 2019. See Full Publication
  • H. Al-Rubaye and G. M. Rebeiz, "Analysis and Design of Wideband 100-200 Gbps I/Q CMOS Modulators," IEEE Journal Solid-State Circuits, Accepted, April 2019. See Full Publication
  • X. Wang, P.P. Mercier, "A Charge-Pump-base Digital LDO Employing an AC-Coupled High-Z Feedback Loop Towards a sub-4fs FoM and a 105,000x Stable Dynamic Current Range," IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC), Apr. 2019. See Full Publication
  • A Abdulslam, B.H. Lam, P.P. Mercier, "A Battery-Connected Symmetric Modified Multilevel Ladder Converter Achieving 0.45W/mm2 Power Density and 90% Peak Efficiency," IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference(CICC), Apr. 2019. See Full Publication
  • V.W. Leung, L.Cui, S. Alluri, J. Lee, J. Huang, E. Mok, S. Shellhammer R. Rao, P. Asbeck, P.P. Mercier, L. Larson, A. Nurmikko, F. Laiwalla, "Distributed Microscale Brain Implants with Wireless Power Transfer and Mbps Bi-directional Networked Communications," IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC), Apr. 2019. See Full Publication
  • S.S. Amin, P.P. Mercier, "A Fully-Integrated Li-ion-Compatible Hybrid 4-Level DC-DC Converter in 28nm FDSOI," IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, vol. 54, no. 3, pp. 720-732, Mar. 2019. See Full Publication
  • J.Lee, E. Mok, J. Huang, L.Cui, A.-H. Lee, V. Leung, P.P. Mercier S. Shellhammer, L. Larson, R.R. Rao, Y.-K. Song, A.Nurmikko, F. Laiwalla, "An Implantable Wireless Network of Disturbed Microscale Sensors for Neural Applications," IEEE EMBS Conference on Neural Engineering (NER), Mar. 2019. See Full Publication
  • P-H. Wang, P.P. Mercier, "A 220µW-85dBm Sensitivity BLE-compliant Wake-up Receiver Achieving -60dB SIR via Single-Die Multi-Channel FBAR-based Filtering and a 4-Dimensional Wake-Up Signature," in Proc. IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), Feb. 2019. See Full Publication
  • J. Warchall, P. Thielmann, Y. Ouyang, H. Garudadi, P.P. Mercier, "A Rugged Wearable Modular ExG Platform Employing a Distributed Scalable Multi-Channel FM-ADC Achieving 101dB Input Dynamic Range and Motion-Artifact Resilence," in Proc. IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), Feb. 2019. See Full Publication
  • J. Park, P.P. Mercier, "A sub-40µW 5Mb/s Magnetic Human Body Communication Transceiver Demonstrating Trans-Body Delivery of High-Fidelity Audio to a Wearable In-Ear Headphone," in Proc. IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), Feb. 2019. See Full Publication
  • A Abdulslam, P.P. Mercier, "A Continuous-Input-Current Passive-Stacked  Third-Order Buck Converter Achieving 0.7W/mm2 Power Density and 94% Peak Efficiency," in Proc. IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), Feb. 2019. See Full Publication
  • S. Ha, C.Kim, J.Park, G. Cauwenberghs, P. Mercier, "A Fully Integrated RF-powered Energy-Replenishing Current-Controlled Stimulator," IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 191-202, Feb. 2019. See Full Publication
  • D. Thomas, N. Rostomyan and P. Asbeck, “A 45% PAE pMOS Power Amplifier for 28GHz Applications in 45nm SOI”, 2018 IEEE Int. Midwest Symp. on Circuits and Systems. See Full Publication
  • Yuji Komatsuzaki, Sandro Lanfranco, et al, “A High Efficiency 3.6-4.0 GHz Envelope-Tracking Power Amplifier Using GaN Soft-Switching Buck-Converter”, 2018 IEEE International Microwave Symposium. See Full Publication
  • N. Rostomyan, M. Ozen and P. Asbeck, “Synthesis Technique for Low-Loss Mm-Wave T/R Combiners for TDD Front-Ends”, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Techn, December 2018. See Full Publication
  • A, Fazli Yeknami, X. Wang, I. Jeerapan, S. Imani, A. Nikoofard, J. Wang, P.P. Mercier, “A 0.3V Biofuel-Cell-Powered Glucose/Lactate Biosensing System,” IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, vol. 53, no. 11, Nov. 2018.
  • H. Al-Rubaye and G. M. Rebeiz, "A DC-60 GHz I/Q Modulator in 45 nm SOI CMOS for Ultra-Wideband 5G Radios," 2018 IEEE BiCMOS and Compound Semiconductor Integrated Circuits and Technology Symposium (BCICTS), pp. 275-278, October 2018. See Full Publication
  • Haowei Jiang, Po-Han Peter Wang, Patrick P. Mercier, and Drew A. Hall, “0.4 V 0.93 nW/kHz Relaxation Oscillator Exploiting Comparator Temperature-Dependent Delay to Achieve 94 ppm/°C Stability,” IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits (JSSC), vol. 53, no. 10, pp. 3004-3011, Oct. 2018. See Full Publication
  • E. Alvarez-Fontecilla, C. Venerus and I. Galton, “Multi-Rate DEM With Mismatch-Noise Cancellation for DCOs in Digital PLLs,” IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers, vol. 65, no. 10, pp. 3125–3137, Oct. 2018. See Full Publication
  • Haowei Jiang, Xiahan Zhou, Saurabh Kulkarni, Michael Uranian, Rajesh Seenivasan, and Drew A. Hall, “A Sub-1 µW Multiparameter Injectable BioMote for Continuous Alcohol Monitoring,” IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC), San Diego, CA, Apr. 9-11, 2018. See Full Publication
  • N. Rostomyan, M. Ozen and P. Asbeck, “28 GHz Doherty Power Amplifier in CMOS SOI With 28% Back-Off PAE”, IEEE Microw. Compon. Lett., vol. 28, no.5, pp.446-448, Mar 2018. See Full Publication
  • A. Fazli Yeknami, X. Wang, S. Imani, A. Nikoofard, I. Jeerapan, J. Wang, P.P. Mercier, “A 0.3V Biofuel-Cell-Powered Glucose/Lactate Biosensing System Employing a 180nW 64dB SNR Passive ∆∑ ADC and a 920MHz Wireless Transmitter,” in Proc. IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), Feb. 2018. See Full Publication
  • Chung Lun Hsu and Drew A. Hall, “A Current Measurement Front-end with 160dB Dynamic Range and 7 ppm INL,” IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), San Francisco, CA, Feb. 12-14, 2018. See Full Publication