Newsletter

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www.gedcenter.org

Skyworks Solutions to join GEDC research program

Hua Wang was made an IEEE Senior Member effective 2015.

Demetrius T. Paris Junior Professor for 2015

Song Hu, Jongseok Park, and Taiyun Chi won ISSCC Analog Devices Inc. Outstanding Student Designer Awards

Hua Wang received the Lockheed Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Award 2015IEEE Atlanta Solid-State Circuits Society (SSCS) and Circuits and Systems Society (CAS) joint chapter won the IEEE SSCS Outstanding Chapter Award of 2014 among over 85 IEEE SSCS chapters in the world. Professor Wang has been the IEEE Atlanta SSCS/CAS chapter chair since

Harris Corp. of Melbourne Florida licenses GEDC technology

Harris and Georgia Tech reached a licensing agreement for three key inventions of Prof. Stephen Ralph (ECE) and his students. Under the agreement Harris gains access to a number of proven algorithms useful for coherent demodulation of complex optical signals. Dr. Richard DeSalvo, Senior Scientist at Harris noted that “The technology created in Prof. Ralph’s group under our funded research program is essential to a suite of tools we have been developing for a number of years”. This transfer of GaTech innovations to industry represent a key goal of the GEDC.Harris and Georgia Tech also renewed the Master Research agreement which describes all contractual arrangements thereby allowing new research tasks to be initiated with relative ease. Within this new MRA Harris continues to support multiple projects within GEDC.Prof. Stephen Ralph and the Terabit Networking Consortium within GEDC continues development with Harris on signal processing strategies for advanced, highly efficient fiber optical networking and high performance coherent RF photonic systems. The efforts also include equalization and linearization of wideband digitized waveforms, and the transmission of arbitrary optical signals using state of the art electric high-speed digital-to-analog converters photonic assisted mm-wave generation and reception. Two students who have worked with Prof. Ralph’ team, Kevin Anzalone and Evan Atwood, are now employed full time at Harris.For the third year in a row Harris is also continuing its work with GEDC in the RF/antenna areas. Profs. John Papapolymerou (ECE) and Massimo Ruzzene (AE/ME) are leading an interdisciplinary research effort on the development and characterization of high performance (electrical and mechanical), wideband RF interconnect technologies for phased arrays used in wireless communication and radar systems. During the summer of 2014 two GT students (one from ECE and one from ME) completed an internship at Harris working on this project. Dylan McQuaide (GT alumni) is now working for Harris as a result of this research collaboration.

Dupuis honored with a DraperPrize for LED research

Skyworks Solutions Inc., a designer and manufacturer of analog and mixed signal semiconductors will soon join GEDC. Skyworks, headquartered in Woburn, Massachusetts, has approximately $2.5 billion of annual revenue and about 5,500 employees. Skyworks has agreed in principle to support 2 Skyworks-GEDC Fellowships per year and to provide in-kind fab support for testing and board building. These new fellowships will also include summer internships for the students. The Fellowships are to support research in a number of areas including power amplifier circuit design and linearity. One Fellowship is planned to be with Prof. John Cressler’s team.

Hua Wang was awarded the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award in 2015 for, “CAREER: A CMOS Multi-Modality Cellular Interfacing Platform for Drug Screening and Stem Cell Culture.”

Adrian Ildefonso has been awarded the 2015 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Adrian is a Ph.D. student in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, where he is advised by John D. Cressler, the Schlumberger Chair Professor in Electronics.

Awards & Honors

George Alexopoulos received an IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S) Undergraduate Scholarship for fall 2014.

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From the Director’s Desk . . .

5

The GEDC includes 15 faculty members, 10 post docs and research scientists and more than 100 graduate students. Our teams are leading innovation spanning all aspects of high-speed electronics and photonics including, RF and wideband electronics, optical networks, electronic packaging, integrated MEMs, wide bandgap technologies, information theory and signal processing.

These technologies have applications in communications, sensing, biology and medicine, energy and lighting, and defense and homeland security. Integrated photonics and packaging are also areas of strength and planned future growth. The GEDC center allows our faculty and partners to build shared resources including our 170GHz tools as well as our Terabit Optical networking testbed. We have access to the best semiconductor foundries as well as state of the art designs tools from Keysight, Cadence and Synopsys.

We hope that you enjoy the presentations we’ve prepared and are able to meet with our students to discuss their research efforts. Our faculty-student teams are focused on one key goal – to work with our industry partners developing technology that is relevant to your business.

Stephen E. Ralph

GT-Bionics Lab partnership update

Dr. Ghovanloo and his team at GT-Bionics Lab have been working on two NSF-funded projects with Premitec Inc., a BioMEMS company in Raleigh, NC that specializes in nano-fabrication and biocompatible materials for interfacing with biological tissue. In the first project, a STTR phase-I, Ghovanloo is combining his Wireless Integrated Neural Recording (WINeR) system with Premitec’s proprietary fine-pitch flexible microelectrode array and biocompatible coating technologies to develop a high-density wireless electrocoticography (ECoG) array that can be used for brain mapping and treatment of epilepsy. In the second project, Premitec is helping Ghovanloo’s team to develop a network of distributed wireless microimplants to record extracellular neural activity from a large areas of the brain.

Analog Devices Inc. sponsors GEDC faculty member on advanced millimeter-wave transmitter architecture research

GEDC has announced the formation of a research partnership with Analog Devices Inc, an American multinational company and world leader and innovator in semiconductor technologies and electronics. The company plans to establish a strategic collaboration with GEDC that would support collaborative research on next-generation high-performance millimeter-wave circuits and systems for ultra-high data-rate wireless communications.

Hua Wang, Demetrius T. Paris Junior Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, will lead this research partnership with Analog Devices in GEDC. His research group, Georgia-Tech Electronics and Microsystems (GEMS) lab will participate in the research through this collaboration.

“As a one of the nation's top universities, Georgia Tech has been leading the research advancement of the field of semiconductors and integrated circuits. The unique expertise and creativity we have here at GEDC will assist Analog Devices to develop high-performance mico-chips to address both existing market needs and emerging future business opportunities,” said Wang. “With ADI’s strong position in both technology and market, Georgia Tech will also benefit from this collaborative relationship.” Wang added that, “This strategic partnership of the two technology leaders naturally creates a great synergy between academia and industry and a wonderful opportunity to achieve translational, high-impact research.”

As a start of this partnership, Analog Devices is committed to sponsor a collaboration with Wang’s research group and provide access to advanced CMOS process. Founded in 1965, Analog Devices today has 9,600 employees worldwide, 2.8 billion US dollars annual sales, and approximately 60,000 customers in the industries of communications, computer, industrial, instrumentation, military/aerospace, automotive, and high-performance consumer electronics applications.

I2R Nanowave Design Center: A success story

In early 2011, I2R Nanowave established its U.S. R&D Center at the Georgia Tech campus to work with GEDC researchers on the development of X-band, gallium nitride-based power amplifiers and lightweight phased array technology that can be used in commercial aerospace applications. In January 2014, I2R Nanowave renewed its research collaboration agreement with GEDC (led by Ken Byers Prof. John Papapolymerou) for another 3 year period, for a total of 6-years, constituting one of the longest industry-university research engagements at Georgia Tech. In addition, I2R Nanowave has recently hired several engineers and technicians for its expanded Atlanta facility focused on electronic module assembly.

This innovative university-industry partnership has led to the development of several technologies in the areas of high frequency circuits that are the heart of radar and wireless communication systems. This collaboration has also supported the work of several Georgia Tech Ph.D. students and GEDC researchers and has led to the publication of peer-reviewed papers and the filing of one invention disclosure. To date, I2R Nanowave has hired two Georgia Tech Ph.D. graduates, keeping some of the best and brightest minds in the State of Georgia.

Professor Maysam Ghovanloo will be chairing the 2015 edition of the IEEE Biomedical Circuits and Systems Conference in Atlanta, from Oct. 22-24, at the historic Academy of Medicine (www.biocas2015.org). The IEEE BioCAS serves as a premier international forum for presenting the interdisciplinary research and development activities at the crossroads of medicine, life sciences, physical sciences and engineering that will shape tomorrow’s medical devices and healthcare systems.

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GEORGIA ELECTRONIC D E S I G N C E N T E R

LEADERSHIP

Stephen E. Ralph Director

John PapapolymerouAssociate Director

John Cressler Chair of the Faculty Executive

Committee

Toshiba has been providing graduate student support and multiple accesses to advanced in-house CMOS process as an in-kind donation with more than 820,000 US dollars in its total donation value. Hua Wang, assistant professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), is leading this collaborative research project at the GEDC. His research group, Georgia-Tech Electronics and Microsystems (GEMS) lab, specializes in CMOS integrated circuit and system designs and will participate in the integrated circuit/system design, testing and demonstration in this collaboration program.

Research collaboration between Georgia Electronic Design Center and Toshiba Corporation on

advanced wireless transmitter architectures

The Georgia Electronic Design Center (GEDC) and Toshiba Corporation are continuing their partnership collaboration in order to conduct research in advanced wireless transmitter architectures. The 2014-2015 collaboration between GEDC and Toshiba focused on exploring advanced wireless transmitter architectures which are conducive to System-on-Chip (SoC) integration in deep sub-micron CMOS processes. The goal of the research into these novel architectures is to address stringent requirements in next-generation mobile wireless applications.

Russell D. Dupuis is among the 170 distinguished innovators named as Fellows of the National Academy of Inventors. This 2014 class brings the total number of NAI Fellows to 414, representing more than 150 prestigious research universities and governmental and non-profit research institutions. Election to NAI Fellow status is a high professional distinction accorded to academic inventors who have demonstrated a highly prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development, and the welfare of society.

Dupuis is also a member of the National Academy of Engineering and is a Fellow of the IEEE, OSA, the American Physical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

program is a fully integrated digital polar Doherty transmitter in a standard 65nm CMOS process node which has been successfully demonstrated at the GEDC. This unique digital polar Doherty architecture enables a fully reconfigurable transmitter to achieve a robust and energy-efficient performance when subjected to in-field antenna load variations. This collaboration work won the Best Student Paper Award (1st Place) at the 2014 IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits (RFIC) Symposium and is later published at the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits (JSSC). Moreover, the teams proposed and demonstrated a hybrid Class-G digital polar Doherty transmitter in a standard 65nm CMOS, so that Class-G digital supply modulation and Doherty active load modulation can cooperate to enable power amplifier efficiency enhancement at deep back-off power level (up to -12dB). This work achieves the state-of-the-art efficiency enhancement among all the reported GHz power amplifiers in silicon. The results are published at IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), which is the flagship conference for integrated circuits and systems.

Accomplishments in LED research lead to a fellowship for Professor Dupuis

Previous GEDC- Toshiba partnership research has led to multiple technology innovations. One recently achieved milestone of the

EMC^2 team researches coffee shop hackers

If you’re sitting in a coffee shop, tapping away on your laptop, feeling safe from cyber criminals because you didn’t connect to the shop’s Wi-Fi, think again. The bad guys may be able to see what you’re doing just by analyzing the low-power electronic signals your laptop emits even when it’s not connected to the Internet.

EMC^2 lab researchers, led by Professor Alenka Zajic, are investigating where these information leaks originate so they can help hardware and software designers develop strategies to plug them. Results of the research were presented at the 47th Annual IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture in Cambridge, U.K. and at the 9th Annual IEEE European Conference in Antennas and Propagation in Lisbon Portugal. The work is sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

Keysight Technologies, Inc., (Formerly Agilent) a provider of electronic measurement solutions to the communications and electronics industries continues its exceptionally strong support of GEDC and Georgia Tech. Keysight has renewed its commitment to providing GaTech with access to their entire suite of EEsof electronic design and simulation tools, including Advanced Design System and SystemVue. These tools are essential to our circuit and systems design research here at GEDC and are used for both undergraduate and graduate ECE course work. Additionally, Keysight, through its University Program, continues to support the high speed fiber networks research efforts led by Prof. Stephen Ralph.

Keysight, formerly Agilent, renews commitment to support

of GEDC research

The conference brings together researchers, designers, clinicians, and engineers to disseminate the latest cutting-edge research results and innovative solutions for today’s health problems at the frontiers of biomedical engineering, and circuits and systems. Three other GEDC faculty members; Profs. Hasler, Wang, and Inan, are also serving on the BioCAS’15 organizing committee”

GEDC faculty to lead IEEE Biomedical Circuits and

Systems Conference

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Director, Georgia Tech Analog Consortium; Ken Byers Professor Microelectronics/Microsystems, and Electronic Design and Applications,

and biochemical sensing

, Georgia Research Alliance and Byers Eminent Scholar; Chair in Optical Networking

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, Schlumberger Chair in Electronics,

Steve W. Chaddick Endowed Chair in Electro-Optics; Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar

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Ken Byers Professor; Associate Director GEDC, h

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Assistant Professor, Demetrius T. Paris Junior Professor Bioengineering, and Electronic Design and Applications,

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Thanks

The faculty members of the GEDC thank Dr. Steve Cross, Executive Vice President for Research for his continued support of our center. This support enables our Industry partnerships possible. The faculty also thank all those within the Institute of Electronics and Nanotechnology who provide invaluable assistance in running our programs. .

New FacesThis year the GEDC has two new team members: Maria Matheson, Primary Admin and Finance support. Maria is often the face of GEDC and helps manage all of our industry programs.

Daniel Kim, Building manager and GEDC support. Daniel helps keeps all our labs and conference facilities fully operational.