Category: Webinar

“Integrated Transformers: from Principles to Applications” – webinar by Prof. Andrea Bevilacqua, University of Padova, Italy

Integrated magnetic transformers are becoming ubiquitous in mm-wave and RF systems, while also finding application in fully-integrated dcdc converters. This talk will cover the fundamentals of the transformer operation spanning from the underlying physical principles, and the link between the magnetic parameters (inductances and magnetic coupling) and the geometry of the device, to its use in the design of building blocks like LNA’s, PA’s, VCO’s, etc. The advantages and possibilities of using a transformer for the implementation of baluns, impedance transformation networks, higher-order resonant networks, feedback circuits, etc., will be highlighted.

Andrea Bevilacqua received the Laurea and Ph.D. degrees in electronics engineering from the University of Padova, Padova, Italy, in 2000, and 2004, respectively. From 2005 to 2015, he was an Assistant Professor with the Department of Information Engineering, University of Padova, where he is now an Associate Professor. His current research interests include the design of analog and RF/microwave integrated circuits and the analysis of wireless communication systems, radars, and dcdc converters. He is author or coauthor of more than 100 technical papers, and he holds 6 patents.

Prof. Bevilacqua is a member of the ITPC of IEEE ISSCC. He served in the TPC of IEEE ESSCIRC from 2007 to 2019, and was TPC Co-Chair of IEEE ESSCIRC 2014. He was a member of the TPC of IEEE ICUWB from 2008 to 2010. He was an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions of Circuits and Systems II from 2011 to 2013 and was nominated Best Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions of Circuits and Systems II for 2012 to 2013. He served as a Guest Editor for the special issue of the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits dedicated to ESSCIRC 2017. He currently serves in the Distinguished Lecturer program of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society.

Please sign up and join us on Wednesday, August 5 at 11:00 IDT.

Link to the Zoom session will be provided after the registration.

Important: The participation is free of charge, but registration is required /registration-andrea-bevilacqua/

For more details and updates on the series of “ACRC Semiconductor Webinars” please follow our newsletters and our website

“Millimeter-Wave Transceivers for High Volume Applications” – webinar by Prof. Thomas Zwick, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany

The enormous technological progress accomplished over the last decades facilitates the utilization of millimeter-wave (mm-Wave) frequencies for mass products like automotive radars, industrial sensors, high-speed data communication links or medical applications. The main enablers are the semiconductor technologies with constantly improving cut-off frequencies reaching several hundred GHz. The dominant limiting factor though for the mass production of low-cost mm-Wave systems above 100 GHz is that, suitable packaging technologies are not yet finally available. The major issue for the packaging is to find a proper way to get all signals in and out of the package, since at mm-Wave frequencies interconnects are very difficult to realize and very lossy. One way out of the dilemma is to integrate the complete transceiver together with the antenna into one single package. Compactness is the key to low losses in mm-Wave interconnects. This also means that the antenna must be integrated into the package.
In this talk, a short overview on the packaging and antenna integration concepts for mm-Wave transceivers is provided together with several particular approaches.

Thomas Zwick (S’95–M’00–SM’06–F’18) received the Dipl.-Ing. (M.S.E.E.) and the Dr.-Ing. (Ph.D.E.E.) degrees from the Universität Karlsruhe (TH), Germany, in 1994 and 1999, respectively. From 1994 to 2001 he was a research assistant at the Institut für Höchstfrequenztechnik und Elektronik (IHE) at the Universität Karlsruhe (TH), Germany. In February 2001, he joined IBM as research staff member at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY, USA.
From October 2004 to September 2007, Thomas Zwick was with Siemens AG, Lindau, Germany. During this period, he managed the RF development team for automotive radars. In October 2007, he became a full professor at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany. He is the director of the Institute of Radio Frequency Engineering and Electronics (IHE) at the KIT. He co-editor of 3 books, author or co-author of 120 journal papers, over 400 contributions at international conferences and 15 granted patents. His research topics include wave propagation, stochastic channel modeling, channel measurement techniques, material measurements, microwave techniques, millimeter wave antenna design, wireless communication and radar system design.
Thomas Zwick’s research team received over 10 best paper awards on international conferences. He served on the technical program committees (TPC) of several scientific conferences. In 2013 Dr. Zwick was general chair of the international Workshop on Antenna Technology (iWAT 2013) in Karlsruhe and in 2015 of the IEEE MTT-S International Conference on Microwaves for Intelligent Mobility (ICMIM) in Heidelberg. He also was TPC chair of the European Microwave Conference (EuMC) 2013 and General TPC Chair of the European Microwave Week (EuMW) 2017. From 2008 until 2015 he has been president of the Institute for Microwaves and Antennas (IMA). T. Zwick became selected as a distinguished IEEE microwave lecturer for the 2013 to 2015 period with his lecture on “QFN Based Packaging Concepts for Millimeter-Wave Transceivers”. Since 2017 he is member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. In 2018 Thomas Zwick became appointed IEEE Fellow. In 2019 he became the Editor in Chief of the IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters. Since 2019 he is a member of acatech (German National Academy of Science and Engineering).

Please sign up and join us on Tuesday , July 21 at 11:00 IDT.

Link to the Zoom session will be provided after the registration.

Important: The participation is free of charge, but registration is required  /registration-thomas-zwick/

For more details and updates on the series of “ACRC Semiconductor Webinars” please follow our newsletters and our website 

“Energy-Efficient Communication Technologies for Emerging Internet-of Things Applications”

Webinar

The ACRC (Advanced Circuit Research Center) in cooperation with the IEEE Solid State Circuits Society continues the series of “ACRC Semiconductor Webinars”  – insightful and enriching workshops held by international leaders and professionals of the semiconductors sector.

This time we are inviting you to a free online seminar on “Energy-Efficient Communication Technologies for Emerging Internet-of Things Applications” given by Prof. Patrick Mercier from University of California, San Diego.

Emerging Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices all require robust yet low-power wireless communications. Unfortunately, most current wireless standards do not intrinsically support low-power operation due to strict requirements on modulation formats, data rates, linearity, packet overheads, and so on. These restrictions impose minimum power consumption requirements for cellular standards (e.g., GSM, LTE, and 5G) and WiFi, but also surprisingly limit the ability of supposedly low-power standards (e.g., Bluetooth Low Energy and Narrowband-IoT) from reaching new application-enabling power levels. This presentation will outline the major challenges facing power reduction in modern wireless systems, and will describe several possible solutions to these challenges. Specifically, we will explore the use of wake-up receivers as a means to reduce the power overhead of between-node synchronization, including a look at a recent design operating at 9GHz. Then, we will discuss a variety of alternative communication schemes that can help to reduce the power of communication in WiFi and body-area-network systems by >1,000x through use of WiFi-compliant backscatter communication and magnetic human body communication systems, respectively. We will then introduce new circuit design techniques based on a topologically-derived “digitally-replaced analog” paradigm towards the implementation of efficient Li-ion-battery-connected RF power amplifiers for high-performance wireless systems.

Patrick Mercier is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and co-founder/co-director of the Center for Wearable Sensors at UC San Diego. He received his B.Sc. degree from the University of Alberta, Canada, in 2006, and the S.M. and Ph.D. degrees from MIT in 2008 and 2012, respectively. Prof. Mercier has received numerous awards, including the San Diego Engineering Council Outstanding Engineer Award in 2020, a National Academy of Engineering Frontiers of Engineering Speaker in 2019, the NSF CAREER Award in 2018, the Biocom Catalyst Award in 2017, the UCSD Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award in 2016, the DARPA Young Faculty Award in 2015, the Beckman Young Investigator Award in 2015, The Hellman Fellowship Award in 2014, the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) Jack Kilby Award in 2010, amongst others. He has published over 130 peer-reviewed papers in venues such as Nature Biotechnology, Nature Communications, ISSCC (17 papers), Advanced Science, and others. He is an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems and the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Letters, is a member of the ISSCC, CICC, and VLSI Technical Program Committees, and has co-edited three books: High-Density Integrated Electrocortical Neural Interfaces (Elsevier Academic Press, 2019), Power Management Integrated Circuits (CRC Press, 2016), and Ultra-Low-Power Short-Range Radios (Springer, 2015). His research interests include the design of energy-efficient mixed-signal systems, RF circuits, power converters, and sensor interfaces for wearable, medical, and mobile applications

Please sign up and join us on Tuesday, July 7 at 20:00 (Israel Day Time).

A link to the Zoom session will be provided after registration.

Important: The participation is free of charge, but registration is required /registration-patrick-mercier/

For more details and updates on the series of “ACRC Semiconductor Webinars” please follow our newsletters and our website 

“Analog Building Blocks of DC-DC Converters”

Webinar

The ACRC (Advanced Circuit Research Center) in cooperation with the IEEE Solid State Circuits Society continues the series of “ACRC Semiconductor Webinars”  – insightful and enriching workshops held by international leaders and professionals of the semiconductors sector.

This time we are inviting you to a free online seminar on “Analog Building Blocks of DC-DC Converters” given by Prof. Bernhard Wicht from Leibniz University Hannover.

System behavior and performance of power management strongly depend on the implementation on circuit level. This tutorial covers the design of DCDC converter building blocks like power switches, gate drivers and their supply, level shifters, error amplifier as well as control loop and current sensing techniques. Circuits for diagnostics and protection will also be addressed. Increasing switching frequency scales down passive components, but poses a challenge for the design of timing critical circuits. The lecture will highlight trade-offs between speed, efficiency, complexity, voltage and current capabilities.

Prof. Bernhard Wicht has 20+ years of experience in analog and power management IC design. He received the Dipl.‑Ing. degree in electrical engineering from University of Technology Dresden, Germany, in 1996 and the Ph.D. degree (Summa Cum Laude) from University of Technology Munich, Germany, in 2002. Between 2003 and 2010, he was with Texas Instruments, Freising, responsible for the design of automotive power management ICs. In 2010, he became a full professor for integrated circuit design and a member of the Robert Bosch Center for Power Electronics at Reutlingen University, Germany. Since 2017, he has been heading the Chair for Mixed-Signal IC Design at Leibniz University Hannover, Germany. His research interest includes IC design with focus on power management, gate drivers and high-voltage ICs. Dr. Wicht was co-recipient of the 2015 ESSCIRC Best Paper Award and of the 2019 First Prize Paper Award of the IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics. In 2018, he received the faculty award for excellent teaching at his university. He invented seventeen patents with several more pending. He currently serves as a member of the Technical Program Committees of ESSCIRC and ISSCC.

Please sign up and join us on Tuesday, June 16 at 16:00 (Israel Day Time).

Link to the Zoom session will be provided after registration.

Important: The participation is free of charge, but registration is required /registration-bernhard-wicht/

For more details and updates on the series of “ACRC Semiconductor Webinars” please follow our newsletters and our website. 

“Agile Hardware Design with a Generator-Based Methodology”

Webinar

The Advanced Circuit Research Center (ACRC) is inviting you to a free online seminar  “Agile Hardware Design with a Generator-Based Methodology” given by Prof. Elad Alon, University of California, Berkeley.

Despite the many applications that could substantially benefit from the energy-performance achievable with an SoC implemented in an advanced process technology, the high costs of designing and verifying such an SoC using current methodologies limits their adoption to end markets greater than ~$1B in size. Not only has this prevented substantial hardware innovation in emerging markets, but even in markets large enough to bear the high initial design cost, designers are being put under constant pressure to improve their productivity given increasingly tight time-to-market constraints and product cycles. In this talk Prof. Alon will describe a collaborative effort to develop an “agile” approach that aims to substantially reduce the design and verification costs of such advanced SoCs as well as their constituent sub-components. Building on principles originally developed for agile software design, the key missing piece for hardware is that rather than focusing on developing instances, designers should focus on developing generators that facilitate re-use and enable agile validation as well as verification. As he will describe in this talk, to support this shift in approach, a number of new technologies have been and continue to be developed in order to enable generation of digital and analog hardware as well as the means to verify the hardware that is produced. After briefly describing a subset of these technologies and highlighting some of their key features, he will then briefly describe various SoC generators and associated results from multiple SoC demonstrators taped-out and validated in a modern FinFET process technology.

Elad Alon is a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California at Berkeley, a co-director of the Berkeley Wireless Research Center (BWRC), and an IEEE Fellow. He is also a Co-Founder and Chief Scientist at Blue Cheetah Analog Design, which is commercializing generator technologies to enable analog/mixed-signal solutions at lower barrier to entry.  He has held advisory, consulting, or visiting positions at a number of leading semiconductor companies, and along with his colleagues and students, been recognized with a number of awards at conference such as ISSCC, VLSI, and CICC.

Please sign up and join us on Tuesday , June 2 at 18:00 IDT.

Link to the Zoom session will be provided after the registration.

Important: The participation is free of charge, but registration is required  /webinar-alon-reg/

For more details and updates on the series of “ACRC Semiconductor Webinars” please follow our newsletters and our website.

“Millimeter-wave to Submillimeter-wave MMICs and Systems for Sensing and Communication”

Webinar

The Advanced Circuit Research Center (ACRC) ) is inviting you to a free online seminar on “Millimeter-wave to Submillimeter-wave MMICs and Systems for Sensing and Communication” given by Dr. Sebastien Chartier, Fraunhofer Institute for applied solid-state physics (IAF) Freiburg, Germany.

The transmission of electromagnetic waves in the atmosphere features local maxima in many frequency bands between 94 GHz and 850 GHz, making them especially attractive for millimeter-wave high-speed data links and long-distance high-resolution radar and imaging systems. High operating frequencies allow for precise geometrical resolution due to high absolute bandwidth and small wavelength and reduce the size of components and antennas as well, predestining them for lightweight spaceborne and airborne systems. In comparison to visible and infrared radiation, a particular benefit of millimeter-waves for imaging and sensing applications is the penetration of dust, fog, rain, snow, and textiles.

This talk covers a broad variety of MMICs and modules developed at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics (IAF) targeting applications for frequencies up to 600 GHz and above, using in-house advanced InGaAs/InAlAs metamorphic high electron mobility transistor (mHEMT) technologies. To achieve very high MMIC operating frequencies, the maximum frequency of oscillation (fmax) of the transistors was boosted to over 1000 GHz by increasing the indium content in the transistor channel and reducing the gate length down to 20 nm. The presented MMICs are essential components in wireless communication systems (including “Beyond 5G” mobile communication), sensor systems, as well as cryogenic MMICs for radio astronomy receivers and future quantum computing hardware. Additionally to single ultra-low-noise amplifiers, mixers, frequency multipliers, Tx/Rx and TRx circuits, different approaches for module packaging and system realization will also be covered.

Sébastien Chartier received the Master’s degree in microwave engineering from the University of Lille, Lille, France, in 2003 and the Dr.-Ing. Degree from the University of Ulm, Ulm, Germany, in 2009. In 2004, he joined the Institute of Electron Devices and Circuits, University of Ulm, as a member of the scientific staff, working on the design, assembly and testing of millimeter-wave SiGe BiCMOS MMICs, especially for application in automotive radar systems. In 2007, he joined the Fraunhofer Institute for applied solid-state physics (IAF) in Freiburg, Germany, working on microwave and millimeter-wave MMIC design based on advanced metamorphic HEMT technologies for radar, communication, medical and radio astronomy applications. From 2009 to 2017, he worked at Airbus Defence and Space GmbH in Ulm, Germany (now Hensoldt GmbH) as an R&D engineer working on SiGe BiCMOS based circuit design for next generation T/R modules for phased-array radar and communication systems. He was appointed specialist for RF system-on-chip in 2011 and Expert for system-on-chip in 2013. In 2017, he joined NXP Semiconductors Germany GmbH, Hamburg, Germany, as a subsystem design leader working on Si-based radar chips for next generation advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). In 2019, he joined the Institute of Robust Power Semiconductor Systems (ILH), University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany as group leader for microwave and terahertz electronics. In 2020, he joined the Fraunhofer Institute for applied solid-state physics (IAF) in Freiburg, Germany as Head of the Business Unit “High Frequency Electronics”. Dr. Chartier has authored and co-authored more than 30 peer-reviewed papers and holds two patents. He was member of the technical program committee of the 2017 European Microwave Week and of the 2019 German Microwave Conference. He is an invited lecturer at the University of Stuttgart since 2020. He is member of IEEE, The Association of German Engineers (VDI), The Association for Electrical, Electronic and Information Technologies (VDE) and the European Microwave Association (EuMA).

Please sign up and join us on Wednesday,  May 20 at 10:30 IDT.

Link to the Zoom session will be provided after the registration.

Important: The participation is free of charge, but registration is required

/webinar-chartier-reg/

“Quantum Computer on a CMOS Chip”

Webinar

The Advanced Circuit Research Center (ACRC) ) is inviting you to a free online seminar on “Quantum Computer on a CMOS Chip” given by Prof. Robert Bogdan Staszewski, University College Dublin.

Quantum computing is a new paradigm that exploits fundamental principles of quantum mechanics, such as superposition and entanglement, to tackle problems in mathematics, chemistry and material science that are well beyond the reach of supercomputers. Despite the intensive worldwide race to build a useful quantum computer, it is projected to take decades before reaching the state of useful quantum supremacy. The main challenge is that qubits operate at the atomic level, thus are extremely fragile, and difficult to control and read out. The current state-of-art implements a few dozen magnetic-spin based qubits in a highly specialized technology and cools them down to a few tens of millikelvin. The high cost of cryogenic cooling prevents its widespread use. A companion classical electronic controller, needed to control and read out the qubits, is mostly realized with room-temperature laboratory instrumentation. This makes it bulky and nearly impossible to scale up to the thousands or millions of qubits needed for practical quantum algorithms. We propose a new quantum computer paradigm that exploits the wonderful scaling achievements of mainstream integrated circuits (IC) technology which underpins personal computers and mobile phones. Just like with a small IC chip, where a single nanometer-sized CMOS transistor can be reliably replicated millions of times to build a digital processor, we propose a new structure of a qubit realized as a CMOS-compatible charge-based quantum dot that can be reliably replicated thousands of times to construct a quantum processor. Combined with an on-chip CMOS controller, it will realize a useful quantum computer which can operate at a much higher temperature of 4 kelvin. Preliminary experimental result appears to validate the proposed ideas.

R. Bogdan Staszewski received B.S. (summa cum laude), M.S. and PhD from University of Texas at Dallas, USA, in 1991, 1992 and 2002, respectively. From 1991 to 1995 he was with Alcatel in Richardson, Texas. He joined Texas Instruments in Dallas, Texas in 1995. In 1999 he co-started a Digital RF Processor (DRP) group in TI with a mission to invent new digitally intensive approaches to traditional RF functions. Dr. Staszewski served as a CTO of the DRP group between 2007 and 2009. In July 2009 he joined Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands where he is currently a part-time Full Professor. Since Sept. 2014 he is a Full Professor at University College Dublin (UCD) in Ireland. He has co-authored five books, eight book chapters, 110 journal and 200 conference publications, and holds 190 issued US patents. His research interests include nanoscale CMOS architectures and circuits for frequency synthesizers, transmitters and receivers, as well as quantum computers. He is a co-founder of a startup company Equal1 Labs aiming at building the first practical CMOS quantum computer. He is an IEEE Fellow and a recipient of IEEE Circuits and Systems Industrial Pioneer Award (http://ieee-cas.org/industrial-pioneer-award-recipients). He was the Chair of the Technical Program Committee (TPC) of the IEEE Dallas Circuits and Systems Workshop, from 2005 to 2008. He was a TPC Chair of IEEE European Solid-State Circuits Conference (ESSCIRC) in 2019 in Krakow, Poland.

Please sign up and join us on Thursday, May 14 at 16:00 IDT.

Link to the Zoom session will be provided after the registration.

Important: The participation is free of charge, but registration is required

http://acrc.net.technion.ac.il/webinar-staszewski-reg/ 

 

“Tiny and Efficient – Power Management as a Key Function in Microelectronic Systems”

Webinar

 

The ACRC (Advanced Circuit Research Center) in cooperation with the IEEE Solid State Circuits Society continues the series of “ACRC Semiconductor Webinars”  – insightful and enriching workshops held by international leaders and professionals of the semiconductors sector.

This time we are inviting you to a free online seminar on “Tiny and Efficient – Power Management as a Key Function in Microelectronic Systems” given by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Bernhard Wicht from Leibniz University Hannover.

Power management comprises integrated circuits for highly efficient power supplies and for controlling power switches. These have recently gained tremendous importance in order to make electronic solutions for global growth areas such as renewable energies, autonomous driving and biomedical more compact, more energy-efficient and more reliable. Future applications in the field of machine learning and AI will only be possible with intelligent power management to supply complex processors and sensors. This talk gives an overview at system and circuit level of current and future challenges, along with examples including the topics of automotive, wearables, GaN, and current measurement.

Please sign up and join us on Thursday, 7 May 2020 at 15:00 IDT. A link to the Zoom session will be provided after registration.

Important: The participation is free of charge, but registration is required  https://forms.gle/7gFMht9eihJyVrcJA