News and Agenda Archive

News

TU Delft Researchers release the OpenDPD Framework for future wireless systems

We are thrilled to release OpenDPD: An Open-Source PyTorch-based End-to-End Learning & Benchmarking Framework for Wideband Power Amplifier Modeling and Digital Pre-Distortion (DPD). Authored by Yizhuo Wu, Gagan Deep Singh, Mohammad Reza Beikmirza, Leo de Vreede, Morteza Alavi, and Chang Gao (https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.08318). DPD enhances signal quality in wideband RF power amplifiers (PAs) and is a critical module in future 6G or Wi-Fi 7 wireless communication systems. OpenDPD comes with a free digital power amplifier I/Q dataset for you to train and benchmark machine learning (ML)/artificial intelligence (AI)-based DPDs and fairly compare them with other works. We will collaborate closely with our industrial partners to update this infrastructure periodically. OpenDPDv2 will come later this year with also free analog PA datasets.

OpenDPD code, datasets, and documentation are publicly available at https://github.com/lab-emi/OpenDPD. This work will be presented as a lecture at the 2024 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS), Singapore, in the Special Session: RFIC & AI: Pioneering New Wireless Communications on May 20, 2024.

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Second place Best Student Paper Award at IMS-2023 for Lennart de Jong

At the 2023 International Microwave Symposium (IMS), former EWI/QuTech student Lennart de Jong won second place for the Best Student Paper Award. His paper is the main result of Lennart’s MSc graduation project, which was supported in part by Intel Corporation and in part by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research under a Veni Program.

This paper describes a clock data recovery (CDR) architecture demonstrating a low recovered clock jitter and high jitter tolerance thanks to incorporating a complementary charge sampling phase detector and clock alignment loop. As the first cryo-CMOS CDR, it enables the required data communication between classical and quantum processors in future large-scale quantum computers. The other co-authors are Joachim I. Bas, Jiang Gong, Fabio Sebastiano, and Masoud Babaie. The paper can be found here.

 

About the conference:

Since 1952, the IEEE International Microwave Symposium (IMS) has been the world’s foremost conference for technologists involved in all aspects of microwave theory and practice, encompassing everything from advances in CAD, modeling, EM simulation, to systems, including the latest RFIC, MIC, MEMS, and filter technologies. The IMS includes technical and interactive sessions, exhibits, student competitions, panels, workshops, tutorials, and networking events, with more than 3000 yearly attendees.


Our Paper Awarded at the IEEE MetroAeroSpace 2023

We are proud to announce that our paper, "Experimental Evaluation of Radar Waveforms for Spectral Coexistence Using the PARSAX Radar", the result of our research collaboration with the team from the University of Naples “Federico II”, has been recognized as the most outstanding paper of the Special Session on Metrology for Radar Systems presented at IEEE MetroAeroSpace 2023 (the award has been sponsored by MDPI Remote Sensing Journal). The paper was acknowledged for its experimental demonstration of radar operability in spectrally dense environments through innovative waveform design.

The award recognition will soon be posted on the official conference website.


Opening ceremony of the EmC XG Labs

Barbara McCune, wife of late Earl McCune, and Lucas van Vliet, Dean of the EEMCS Faculty, inaugurated the Earl McCune XG Labs on April 17th, 2023. Many people attended the ceremony, both from the Microelectronics department as well as external partners such as TNO, Nokia, Rohde&Schwarz, BSW...

The EmC XG Labs receives its name from Prof. Earl McCune (EmC), who enabled the neXt Generation (XG) communication and sensing efforts at TU Delft thanks to his great enthusiasm, his vast amount of knowledge and his warm personality.

The EmC XG Labs consist of a cluster of state-of-the-art microwave laboratories, covering the frequency spectrum from 30 kHz to 500 GHz, able to perform measurements on packaged, on-wafer and over-the-air devices and systems, providing an excellent frame for students, scholars and faculty members to carry out their research.


Dr. Chang Gao Honored as an MIT Innovator Under 35 Europe 2023

We are delighted to share that Dr. Chang Gao, a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor at the Department of Microelectronics, has been distinguished as an MIT Innovator Under 35. This eminent acknowledgment highlights Gao's extraordinary accomplishments in creating energy-conserving artificial intelligence (AI) computation that retains accuracy. His inventive work has empowered wearable and portable devices and enduring robotic prosthesis control to offer round-the-clock monitoring for better health results and an improved patient experience.

Dr. Gao's methodology strays from conventional neural network models, which may be biologically precise but also expensive and less efficient for real-world applications. Instead, he employs neuromorphic principles, sparse neuron firing, and connectivity to reshape deep recurrent neural networks into more budget-friendly versions. His research effectively connects artificial neural networks with spiking neural networks, speeding up computation while preserving competitive accuracy for real-world tasks.

Dr. Gao's exceptional work has garnered him numerous awards, such as the Best Paper Award at the 2020 IEEE International Conference on Artificial Intelligence Circuits and Systems, co-recipient of the 2020 Misha Mahowald Prize for Neuromorphic Engineering; the 2022 Mahowald Early Career Award for Neuromorphic Engineering; and the 2022 Marie-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship for his project on portable radar systems driven by energy-conscious AI accelerators.

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Chang Gao receives the Mahowald Early Career Award for Neuromorphic Engineering

The MECA jury has awarded the 2022 Mahowald Early Career Award to Chang Gao (Assistant Professor in ELCA) for the project "Accelerating Recurrent Neural Networks with Neuromorphic Principles." The project introduces efficient computing using the neuromorphic principles of spatial and temporal sparsity, leading to an energy-efficient accelerator for edge RNN computing. Gao's accomplishments have the potential to revolutionize applications in healthcare, wearables, and intelligent biomedical implants.

The Mahowald Early Career Award (MECA) recognizes an exceptionally talented student, as Misha Mahowald was. The Award is made for an innovative project that addresses a significant problem in neuromorphic engineering or related problems in neuroscience and neural computation. In their submission, candidates must make a convincing case for why their project fulfills this criterion.

Gao developed this work during his Ph.D. with the Sensors Group at the Institute of Neuroinformatics, University of Zurich and ETH Zurich. He is now a tenure-track assistant professor at TU Delft, where he has started a lab entitled "Efficient circuits & systems for Machine Intelligence" (EMI). Gao's Google scholar profile provides links to his work.

 

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Happy holidays and a radiant 2023!


First Prize in Young Scientists Contest at the 2022 International Radar Symposium in Gdansk, Poland

The MS3 group is glad to inform you that during the 10th MICROWAVE & RADAR WEEK in Gdansk, Poland our former MSc student Detmer Bosma won the First Prize in the Young Scientists Contest at the 2022 International Radar Symposium with the article "Polarimetric Signatures on Moving Automotive Vehicles Based on the H/A/α-Decomposition" and an excellent presentation about the main results of his MSc thesis project, which were done under the supervision of dr. O. Krasnov and prof. A. Yarovoy, and successfully defended in November 2021 !!!

Congratulations, Detmer!


Happy Secretaries Day!!!

Our congratulations and best wishes!


2021-2022 IEEE SSCS Predoctoral Achievement Award

A small number of promising graduate students receive the IEEE SSCS Predoctoral Achievement Award each year. Masoud Pashaeifar, our 4th-year Ph.D. student, is awarded this prestigious SSCC recognition in this year's edition. At ELCA, we are delighted and proud of Masoud. We wish him the best of luck for the rest of his Ph.D. journey. 

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New project granted to the ELCA and MS3 groups

A new project sponsored by NXP and TKI entitled "Distributed High-Resolution Automotive Radar for Autonomous and Secure Mobility (DiRAc)" is granted to the ELCA and MS3 groups of our department.

Advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) are transforming cars into securely-connected, highly-autonomous vehicles with the capability of sensing the environment, thinking, and taking adequate decisions in a huge number of traffic conditions. Enabling components of ADAS are radar transceivers permanently measuring the range, angle, and velocity of objects around the vehicle. The penetration of radars into urban scenarios requires extremely high angular resolution to separate pedestrians, bicycles, pets and even smaller targets.

Angular resolution is a challenge for single mmWave radars of limited aperture size. That is why in this new joint project with NXP Semiconductors we will therefore pursue a distributed, synchronized network of small aperture radar sensors in this research project.  It deals with high-resolution imaging of the environment using a moving platform, wideband mmWave signals, and multiple distributed MIMO radars with a small number of antennas. Solutions for four critical radar architectural and signal processing challenges will be pursued: Imaging topology, waveform and radar synchronization, 360 degrees image focusing, and bistatic signaling. Two PhD students (one at ELCA, another one at MS3) will work for this project.


ELCA @ 2021 Huawei Student Design Contest

On the 15th of December 2021, the Huawei Belgium Research Center (BERC) held its yearly Analog/RF Student design contest. In this competition, ten students from the entire Benelux presented their previously published research to an audience consisting of Huawei managers and engineers.
Our Ph.D. candidate, Mohammadreza Beikmirza, proudly represented the ELCA research group and received the first-place award of the contest. Mohammadreza Beikmirza highlighted his innovative 4-way Doherty digital-intensive transmitter. In his breakthrough RFIC chip, a 12-bit 4-way Doherty I/Q digital transmitter featuring a 50% LO signed I/Q interleaved upconverter in 40nm CMOS was presented. His chip achieves 27.5dBm RF peak power at 5.5GHz, while its drain efficiencies at peak and 10-dB back-off are 47% and 40%, respectively. Its intrinsic I/Q image and LO leakage of a 200MHz single-tone signal are better than -62 & -67dBc, respectively, over a 4.5-to-6GHz band. Using a simple DPD when applying a 320MHz 512-QAM OFDM signal, the measured ACLR & EVM are -40dBc & -32dB, respectively. 


ISOCC 2021 ISE President Best Paper Award

At this year's edition of ISOCC 2021, our former excellent bachelor and master student, Jun Feng, obtained the "2021 ISE President Best Paper Award" for his paper: "A Versatile and Efficient 01.-to-11 Gb/s CML Transmitter in 40-nm CMOS."

Ph.D. candidates Mohammadreza Beikmirza and Milad Mehrpoo contributed to Jun's outstanding work. Jun is now a Ph.D. candidate at KU-Leuven. We congratulate Jun, Mohammadreza, and Milad for this award and send our best wishes for their future research.


ELCA's Contribution at ISSCC 2021

At this year ISSCC, four of our talented Ph.D. students, Mohammad Reza Beikmirza, Mohammad Ali Montazerolghaem, Bagas Parbowo, and Masoud Pashaeifar will present four papers in sessions 6.2, 6.5, 13.3, and 14.4, respectively. We, Masoud Babaie and Morteza Alavi, as their Ph.D. supervisors, invite you all to participate in their sessions. They work day and night tirelessly for the last three/two years. Mainly, we credit their dedication during lockdown to finish their chip measurements to make their publications ready in-time for ISSCC submission. Well done to all of them. We are proud of them.


European Microwave Week 2020

Researchers from our Department, specifically from MS3, ELCA, QuTech, and THz groups, played a tremendous role both in the organisation of the event itself, originally planned to take physically place in Utrecht here in the Netherlands, and in the scientific contributions in the diverse fields of automotive technology, radar sensing, and microwave, THz, and quantum components and techniques.

Our scientific contributions included over 6 papers accepted and presented, 7 invited talks at different organised workshops and short courses, and at the Doctoral School and the Automotive Forum.

The most visible roles in the organisation of the even were the General TPC Chair, Prof Yarovoy, and the Treasurer, Dr Lager, plus the many researchers who volunteered as reviewers. Contributors to the scientific program of the conference in invited talks and workshops were also Dr Fioranelli, Dr Spirito, Dr Babaie, Dr Cavallo, Dr Sebastiano, Prof Vaucher, in addition to many PhD candidates and postdocs.

For more information on the event proceedings with papers and workshops, look at https://www.eumweek.com/docs/programme.pdf.


CUM LAUDE PhD Defense – Yanki Aslan

On Wednesday, August 26th, 2020 Yanki Aslan, the Ph.D. candidate in the MS3 group, successfully defended his Ph.D. work entitled “Antenna Array Synthesis and Beamforming for 5G Applications: An Interdisciplinary Approach” and graduated cum laude.

Congratulations to Yanki for this excellent result!

Now dr. Aslan will continue to work within the MS3 group as a postdoctoral researcher on a project in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA).

Abstract:

Realization of the future 5G systems requires the design of novel mm-wave base station antenna systems that are capable of generating multiple beams with low mutual interference while serving multiple users simultaneously using the same frequency band. Besides, small wavelengths and high packaging densities of front-ends lead to overheating of such systems, which prevents safe and reliable operation. Since the strict cost and energy requirements of the first phase 5G systems favor the use of low complexity beamforming architectures, computationally efficient signal processing techniques, and fully passive cooling strategies, it is a major challenge for the antenna community to design multibeam antenna topologies and front-ends with enhanced spatial multiplexing, limited inter-beam interference, acceptable implementation complexity, suitable processing burden, and natural-only/radiative cooling.Traditionally, array design has been performed based on satisfying the given criteria solely on the radiation patterns (gain, side lobe level (SLL), beamwidth etc.). However, in addition to the electromagnetic aspects, multi-beam antenna synthesis and performance evaluation in 5G systems at mm-waves must combine different disciplines, including but not limited to, signal processing, front-end circuitry design, thermal management, channel & propagation and medium access control aspects. Considering the interdisciplinary nature of the problem, the main objective of this research is to develop, evaluate and verify innovative multibeam array techniques and solutions for 5G base station antennas, not yet used nor proposed for mobile communications. The research topics include the investigation of (i) new array topologies, compatible with IC passive cooling, including sparse, space tapered arrays and optimized subarrays, meeting key requirements of 3-D multi-user coverage with frequency re-use and power-efficient side-lobe control, (ii) adaptive multiple beamforming strategies and digital signal processing algorithms, tailored to these new topologies, and (iii) lowcost/competitive and sufficiently generic implementation of the above array topologies and multi-beam generation concepts to serve multiple users with the same antenna(s) with the best spectrum and power efficiencies. This doctoral thesis consists of three parts. Part I focuses on the system-driven aspects which cover the system modeling (including the link budget and precoding), propagation in mm-wave channels, and statistical assessment of the Quality of Service (QoS). Although separate comprehensive studies exist both in the field of propagation/system modeling and antennas/beamforming, the link between the two disciplines is still weak. In this part, the aim of the study is to bridge the gap between the two domains and to identify the trade-offs between the complexity of beamforming, the QoS, and the computational cost of precoding in the 5G multi-beam base station arrays for various use cases. Based on the system model developed, a novel quantitative relation between the antenna SLLs/pattern nulls and the statistical QoS is established in a line-of-sight (LoS) dominated the mm-wave propagation scenario. Moreover, the potential of using smart (low in-sector side-lobe) array layouts (with simple beam steering) in obtaining sufficiently high and robust QoS, while achieving the optimally low processing costs is highlighted. For a possible pure non-line-of-sight (NLoS) scenario, the system advantages (in terms of the beamforming complexity and the interference level) of creating a single, directive beam towards the strongest multipath component of a user are explained via ray-tracing based propagation simulations. The insightful system observations from Part I lead to several fundamental research questions: Could we simplify the multiple beamforming architecture while keeping a satisfying QoS? Are there any efficient yet effective alternative interference suppression methods to further improve the QoS? How should we deal with the large heat generation at the base station? These questions, together with the research objectives, form the basis for the studies performed in the remaining parts. Part II of the thesis focuses on the electromagnetism-driven aspects which include innovative, low-complexity subarray based multibeam architectures and new array optimization strategies for effective SLL suppression. The currently proposed multi-beam 5G base stations in the literature for beamforming complexity reduction use either a hybrid array of phased subarrays, which limits the field-of-view significantly or employ a fully-connected analog structure, which increases the hardware requirements remarkably. Therefore, in the first half of this part, the aim is to design low-complexity hybrid (or hybrid-like) multiple beamforming topologies with a wide angular coverage. For this purpose, two new subarray based multiple beamforming concepts are proposed: (i) a hybrid array of active multiport subarrays with several digitally controlled Butler Matrix beams and (ii) an array of cosecant subarrays with a fixed cosecant shaped beam in elevation and digital beamforming in azimuth. Using the active (but not phased) multiport subarrays, the angular sector coverage is widened as compared to that of a hybrid array of phased subarrays, the system complexity is decreased as compared to that of a hybrid structure with a fully-connected analog network, and the effort in digital signal processing is reduced greatly. The cosecant subarray beamforming, on the other hand, is shown to be extremely efficient in serving multiple simultaneous co-frequency users in the case of a fairness-motivated LoS communication thanks to its low complexity and power equalization capability. Another critical issue with the currently proposed 5G antennas is the large inter-user interference caused by the high average SLL of the regular, periodic arrays. Therefore, in the second half of Part II, the aim is to develop computationally and power-efficient SLL suppression techniques that are compatible with the 5G’s multibeam nature in a wide angular sector. To achieve this, two novel techniques (based on iterative parameter perturbations) are proposed: (i) a phase-only control technique and (ii) a position-only control technique. The phase-only technique provides peak SLL minimization and simultaneous pattern nulling, which is more effective than the available phase tapering methods in the literature. The position-only technique, on the other hand, yields uniform-amplitude, (fully-aperiodic and quasi-modular) irregular planar phased arrays with simultaneous multibeam optimization. The latter technique combines interference-awareness (via multibeam SLL minimization in a predefined cell sector) and thermal-awareness (via uniform amplitudes and minimum element spacing constraint) for the first time in an efficient and easy-to-solve optimization algorithm. Part III of the thesis concentrates on the thermal-driven aspects which cover the thermal system modeling of electronics, passive cooling at the base stations, and the role of antenna researchers in array cooling. The major aim here is to form a novel connection between the antenna system design and thermal management, which is not yet widely discussed in the literature. In this part, an efficient thermal system model is developed to perform the thermal simulations. To effectively address the challenge of thermal management at the base stations, fanless CPU heatsinks are exploited for the first time for fully-passive and low-cost cooling of the active integrated antennas. To reduce the size of the heatsinks and ease the thermal problem, novel planar antenna design methodologies are also proposed. In the case of having a low thermal conductivity board, using a sparse irregular antenna array with a large inter-element spacing (such as a sunflower array) is suggested. Alternatively, for the densely packed arrays, increasing the equivalent substrate conductivity by using thick ground planes and simultaneously enlarging the substrate dimensions is proven to be useful. The performed research presents the first-ever irregular/sparse and subarray based antennas with wide scan multi-beam capability, low temperature, high-efficiency power amplifiers, and low level of side lobes. The developed antenna arrays and beam generation concepts could have also an impact over a broad range of applications where they should help overcome the capacity problem by use of multiple adaptive antennas, improve reliability and reduce interference.

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SSCS WYE Webinar

Webinar: To Academia, or to Industry, That is the Question. Presented by: Kofi Makinwa and Shin-Lien Lu

Abstract:

You are about to finish graduate school or perhaps a young or seasoned professional, contemplating a career transition. Which is better - a career in academia or industry? What are the pros and cons of one versus the other? How can you start exploring and build up your career accordingly? In this webinar, we will interview Dr. Linus Lu, a professor-turned-industry veteran, and Prof. Kofi Makinwa, an industry veteran-turned-professor, who will share their insights and perspectives from their personal journeys in both academia and industry careers. They will also address what triggered their transitions, how they staged their transitions, and offer their crystal ball projections on present and future career prospects in the solid-state-circuits profession.

REGISTER TODAY!

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In Memoriam – Earl McCune (1956 – 2020)

In one of his last interviews, Earl told us that he was willing to fight a few persistent beliefs in the field of wireless communication. For instance, he was busy making 5G more energy efficient. A challenge in which, according to Earl, all links in the communication chain need to be overhauled. Being both a professor at TU Delft and entrepreneur in California, Earl was involved in several major projects in this field. In Silicon Valley, he followed the idea of building a single large switch in which the available power varies each time. At TU Delft he worked with various groups on a solution consisting of hundreds of smaller transistors of variable size.

The love for building things

One evening, when Earl was twelve, his father explained a few months’ worth of network theory of electrical circuits to him. From that moment on, Earl became enchanted by the subject. As a result, he worked on technology development in the field of radiofrequency and wireless design for more than 45 years, most of which he spent in industry. ‘I just love to build things,’ Earl told about that, ‘and I have seen a lot of what works, and what doesn’t work.’ Although he actually enjoyed his early retirement in California, he couldn’t do nothing. Because he still wanted to help solve society’s problems, he accepted a position as professor at TU Delft.

Warm personality

Earl will not only be remembered for his boundless enthusiasm for the improvement of systems, and the inexhaustible amount of knowledge he brought with him; more than that, Earl was a mentor, an inspirer, an adventurer and a warm personality who put a smile on many people's faces with his dry sense of Californian humour.


Outstanding TU Delft score at ISSCC 2020

This year's iteration of the world's top conference in IC design, the International Solid-State Circuit Conference (ISSCC 2020), saw the TU Delft represented by no less than 7 papers from the Department of Microelectronics - an outstanding achievement that does not even include 3 additional papers presented by former TU Delft alumni, currently affiliated with Bosch, ADI and SiTime.

ME's papers were in the following areas:

Precision Analog Circuits (Makinwa): An energy-efficient temperature sensor and an accurate frequency references, both with state-of-the-art (SOTA) performance;
Amplifiers (Fan, Pertijs, Makinwa): A class-D power amplifier (SOTA linearity and efficiency) and an amplifier for ultrasound systems with continuously variable gain (a first);
Circuits for Quantum computers (Sebastiano, Babaie): A multi-qubit controller (capable of handling 128 qubits, also a first) and a high-performance oscillator (also a first!), both operating at 4K;
Human computer interfaces (Pertijs): A chip-set that enables pen/finger-driven electronic white-boards with SOTA resolution and frame rate;

Some more stories made this event additionally special:

• The TU Delft was the largest European contributor to the conference;
• TU Delft's PhD student Jeroen van Dijk participated in the 1st ever ISSCC Quiz show!

Congratulations to all co-authors and PIs for this great collective achievement!

List of contributions:

Ç. Gürleyük, S. Pan and K. A.A. Makinwa,
"A 16MHz CMOS RC Frequency Reference with ±400ppm Inaccuracy from 45°C to 85°C After Digital Linear Temperature Compensation";

S. Karmakar, H. Zhang, R. Van Veldhoven, L. Breems, M. Berkhout, Q. Fan and K. A.A. Makinwa,
"A 28W, -108.9dB/-102.2dB THD/THD+N, Hybrid ΔΣ-PWM Class-D Audio Amplifier with 91% Peak Efficiency and Reduced EMI Emission";

S. Pan and Kofi A.A. Makinwa,
"A CMOS Resistor-Based Temperature Sensor with a 10fJ∙K2 Resolution FoM and 0.4°C (3σ) Inaccuracy From −55°C to 125°C after a 1-point Trim";

E. Kang, M. Tan, J.-S. An, Z.-Y. Chang, P. Vince, N. Sénégond, T. Mateo, C. Meynier and M. Pertijs,
"A 2 pA/√Hz Transimpedance Amplifier for Miniature Ultrasound Probes with 36dB Continuous Time-Gain Compensation";

J.-S. An, J.-H. Ra, E. Kang, M. A. P. Pertijs and S.-H. Han,
"A Capacitive Touch Chipset with 33.9dB Charge-Overflow Reduction Using Amplitude-Modulated Multi-Frequency Excitation and Wireless Power and Data Transfer to an Active Stylus";

B. Patra, J. P. G. van Dijk, S. Subramanian, A. Corna, X. Xue, C. Jeon, F. Sheikh, E. Juarez-Hernandez, B. Perez Esparza, H. Rampurawala, B. Carlton, N. Samkharadze, S. Ravikumar, C. Nieva, S. Kim, H.-J. Lee, A. Sammak, G. Scappucci, M. Veldhorst, L. M. K. Vandersypen, M. Babaie, F. Sebastiano, E. Charbon and S. Pellerano,
"A Scalable Cryo-CMOS 2-to-20GHz Digitally Intensive Controller for 4×32 Frequency Multiplexed Spin Qubits/Transmons in 22nm FinFET Technology for Quantum Computers";

J. Gong, Y. Chen, F. Sebastiano, E. Charbon and M. Babaie,
"A 200dB FoM 4-to-5GHz Cryogenic Oscillator with an Automatic Common-Mode Resonance Calibration for Quantum Computing Applications".


Prof. Klaas Bult receives IEEE Donald O. Pederson award

The IEEE Solid-State Circuits Award was established by the Board of Directors in 1987. The award was renamed the IEEE Donald O. Pederson Award in Solid-State Circuits in 2005. Don was a co-founder of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Council, the forerunner of today's Solid-State Circuits Society, in 1966, and he was instrumental in launching the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits that same year. Recipient selection is administered through the Technical Field Awards Council of the IEEE Awards Board. The award consists of a bronze medal, certificate, and honorarium.


Veni award for Masoud Babaie

Energiezuinige, mm-formaat radiofrequentiezendontvangers voor Internet-der-dingen toepassingen (PaTRIOT)

Miniaturization of wireless implantable medical devices to sub-mm dimensions can play a critical role in our future healthcare systems. However, the size of those devices is currently limited by off-chip crystal oscillators. This proposal introduces a new digital-intensive solution to break that barrier and enable fully integrated and implantable radios.


May 17th, 09.30, EEMCS lecture hall Ampere, Micro electronics symposium: Who's talking, who's listening?

Concept program

09:35 Welcome Leo de Vreede

09:45 Bram Nauta (University of Twente)

N-path filters the enabler for software defined wireless receivers?

10:15 Peter Baltus (Technical University Eindhoven)

Unconventional Wireless Applications

10:45 break

11:15 Patrick Reynaert (University Leuven, Belgium)

Polymer Microwave Fibers: who's waiting for it?

11:45 Leo de Vreede (Technical University Delft)

Digital Transmitters for Sub-6GHz Wireless Applications

12:15 lunch (Restaurantzaal)

13:00 Yao-Hong Liu(IMEC)

Listen to your gut: swallable digital transmitter design

13:30 wrap-up Kofi Makinwa (Technical University Delft)

13:45 conclusion


First Prize of 3-E Royal SMIT BSc Competition

ELCA research group congratulates Joram van der Velden and his team, comprising Louis Marting, Jordy van der Horst, and Nandor Toth, BSc. students from TU-Delft who have won the 1st prize in the Netherlands national competition for the best BScs. graduated in 2018 in Electric Energy and Electricity supply Engineering. This bachelor project has been executed inside the ELCA research group in the spring of 2018.

The 3 E-Royal SMIT BSc prize 2018 ceremony took place on Friday 22/03/2019 in Nijmegen. More information can be found here .

This bachelor thesis was supervised by Marco Pelk, Masoud Babaie, and Morteza Alavi. The thesis is located here .


Sunil receives ISSCC Student Travel Grant

Congratulations to Sunil on receiving a Student Travel Grant. He will be recognized at the Student Research Presentation Session at ISSCC-2019. The IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society Student Travel Grant Award (STGA) progam recognizes and promotes early career accomplishments in all solid-state circuits fields by supporting student travel to SSCS-sponsored conferences.


Vacancy: Assistant/Associate Professor of Bioelectronics

Assistant/Associate Professor of Bioelectronics

Faculty: Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science
Required Level: Completed PhD
Appointment: 32-38 hours per week
Contract duration: Tenure
Salary: 3545 - 5513 Euro per month (1 fte)

Faculty Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science


The Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (EEMCS) is known worldwide for its high academic quality and the social relevance of its research programmes. The faculty’s excellent facilities accentuate its international position in teaching and research. Within this interdisciplinary and international setting the faculty employs more than 1100 employees, including about 400 graduate students and about 2100 students. Together they work on a broad range of technical innovations in the fields of sustainable energy, telecommunications, microelectronics, embedded systems, computer and software engineering, interactive multimedia and applied mathematics.


The Department of Microelectronics has a strong interdisciplinary research and education programme in the areas of 1. health and well-being, 2. autonomous systems, 3. next generation wireless and sensing technology and 4. safety and security.


With 11 IEEE Fellows among the staff, an excellent microfabrication infrastructure, electrical and physical characterisation facilities, and a strong international academic and industrial network, the department provides high-level expertise in each of these areas throughout the entire system chain.


The Section Bioelectronics is a relatively new section that has been created to address coherently the challenges we face in developing bioelectronic medicine and electroceuticals. The group conducts research, education and valorisation in the fields of circuits and systems for active wearable, implantable and injectable biomedical diagnostic, monitoring and therapeutic microsystems. The group is active in the domains of biosignal acquisition, conditioning and detection, electrical stimulation, transcutaneous wireless communication and power transfer, energy harvesting, bioinspired circuits and systems, CMOS diagnostic systems, flexible implants and microsystem integration.

Job description

The Bioelectronics group is offering a tenure-track position at the Assistant or Associate Professor level in the field of biomedical circuits and systems. You will further develop existing research topics, such as mixed-mode and digital circuits and systems for active wearable and implantable medical devices and create new topics, which may include bioelectronic medicine. You will be involved in teaching at the BSc and MSc levels in the TU Delft's Electrical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering programmes and the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Technical Medicine programme. Collaborative initiatives are strongly encouraged. You are expected to write research proposals for national and international funding organisations. This is a tenure-track position for a period of five years with the possibility of a permanent faculty position at the end of the contract, subject to mutual agreement.


A Tenure Track, a process leading up to a permanent appointment with the prospect of becoming an Associate or Full Professor, offers young, talented academics a clear and attractive career path. During the Tenure Track, you will have the opportunity to develop into an internationally acknowledged and recognised academic. We offer a structured career and personal development programme designed to offer individual academics as much support as possible. For more information about the Tenure Track and the personal development programme, please visit www.tudelft.nl/tenuretrack.

Job requirements

You must have a PhD degree in the field of biomedical circuits and systems (BioCAS) and some years of experience as a post-doc or university professor. You have an excellent academic track record, reflected by peer-reviewed journal publications, conference contributions, and international research experience. An affinity for working on the interface with other disciplines (biomedical engineering, neuroscience, electrophysiology, biomedical signal processing, etc.) and with clinicians and medical researchers is preferred. You should have a demonstrated ability to initiate and direct research projects and to obtain external funding. Experience in teaching and mentoring of students is required. A teaching qualification is recommended. Demonstrated ability in written and spoken English is required.

Employment conditions

At the start of the tenure track you will be appointed as Assistant Professor for the duration of six years. Section leader, department leaders and you will agree upon expected performance and (soft) skills. You will receive formal feedback on performance and skills during annual assessment meetings and the mid-term evaluation. If the performance and skills are evaluated positively at the end of the tenure track, you will be appointed in a permanent Assistant Professor position.


TU Delft offers a customisable compensation package, a discount for health insurance and sport memberships, and a monthly work costs contribution. Flexible work schedules can be arranged. An International Children’s Centre offers childcare and an international primary school. Dual Career Services offers support to accompanying partners. Salary and benefits are in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities.


TU Delft sets specific standards for the English competency of the teaching staff. TU Delft offers training to improve English competency.


Inspiring, excellent education is our central aim. If you have less than five years of experience and do not yet have your teaching certificate, we allow you up to three years to obtain this.

Information and application

For information about this vacancy, you can contact Prof. Wouter Serdijn, email: W.A.Serdijn@tudelft.nl.


For information about the selection procedure, please contact Mrs. L.M. Ophey, HR-Advisor, email: hr-eemcs@tudelft.nl


To apply, please submit by email a detailed CV that includes a list of publications, contact information of at least three scientists whom we can contact for letters of recommendation, and a research and teaching statement along with a letter of application by November 30, 2018 to: hr-eemcs@tudelft.nl.


When applying please mention vacancy number EWI2018-28.




Slimme sensor die energie uit de lucht plukt, heeft eindeloos veel toepassingsmogelijkheden

Begin oktober gingen ze in het kader van een pilot het asfalt in: slimme sensoren die de temperatuur in het wegdek meten, zodat onder andere veel gerichter en efficiënter tegen gladheid kan worden gestrooid. De innovatie werd mede mogelijk gemaakt door de sectie Bioelectronics binnen de faculteit Elektrotechniek, Wiskunde en Informatica van de TU Delft die zich volgens hoogleraar Wouter Serdijn vooral bezig houdt met…de elektronische behandeling van aandoeningen in het menselijk lichaam.

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TU Delft "Female Fellowship" Tenure Track Academic Positions

All academic levels; apply before Jan 8, 2018.

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RF/Wireless Educational/Research Track

Prof. Leo de Vreede presented this brief introduction on the September 5th, 2017 for the new master students of the Microelectronic Department. In this short presentation, Leo introduces our scientific staff members, graduate master courses of RF/Wireless track together with themes of our Master/Ph.D. projects. Moreover, he reiterates ERL/ELCA past remarkable achievements. You can find the RF/Wireless Educational Track presentation here: RF/Wireless Educational Track


BSc Group at ELCA awarded with IEEE Best High Tech Start-up Business Plan

At the Bachelor Electrical Engineering Graduation Grand Finale held on 7 July 2017, the six-student group formed by Bilal Bouazzata, Laurens Buijs, Jun Feng, Martijn Hoogelander, Alexander Louwerse and Niels van der Kolk received the IEEE Best High Tech Start-up Business Plan award from Koen Bertels for their business plan on the topic of their graduation project at ELCA.

The group was supervised by Marco Pelk and Morteza Alavi while the project was proposed by Leo de Vreede.

During this project, the group accomplished a proof of concept for a promising "interpolating-supply" power amplifier efficiency enhancement technique, laying a foundation for future research.


Robots are electric animals

On Aprl 6, Chris Verhoeven, member from the Electronics Groups has been interviewed on NPO 2 in the Programme "Kennis van Nu". The theme is Robots are like animals. De Kennis van Nu op 6 april om 19.20 uur op NPO2

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Else Kooi Award Ceremony for Masoud Tohidian (Electronic Research Laboratory)

The 2017 Else Kooi Award has been given to Dr Massoud Tohidian during the Award Ceremony at ICT open in Amersfoort on March 22, 2017. The Award was given by professor Bram Nauta (University of Twente), chair of the Else Kooi Award Foundation. Dr Tohidian was granted with the award for his scientific research on high-performance super-heterodyne receivers that are implemented using a minimum of analog circuits.

Masoud Tohidian obtained his PhD in September 2015 at the Electronics Research Laboratory group of the EEMCS Faculty, Delft University of Technology.

The Else Kooi Award is an annual award for young researchers in the field of applied semiconductor research conducted in the Netherlands. The award comes with a prize of 5,000 euros.

Massoud studied high-performance super-heterodyne receivers at the system and architectural level as well as the most critical building blocks at the circuit level. As part of his project, he designed new approaches to especially the bandpass filter, realizing a performance that exceeded the state of the art by a significant margin on several key parameters. Furthermore, he integrated these filters in a flexible super-heterodyne receiver, verifying and demonstrating the performance that can be achieved through this approach.

The jury of the Else Kooi Award concludes that this work is a combination of high quality theoretical analysis, modelling, design and experimental verification at the system, architectural and circuit level, resulting in high performance filters and receivers with a high scientific impact as well as high industrial relevance.

For more information please contact Prof. Edoardo Charbon from the Else Kooi Award foundation: phone +31 (0)15 278 36 67, email: e.charbon@tudelft.nl

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A need to amplify and combine to enable 5G in higher frequencies

Our society's social and streaming behaviour speeds up the need for 5G. Marco Spirito, Daniele Cavallo, Masoud Babaie and Andrea Neto (Microelectronics) are all working on the 'key building' blocks that will enable 5G systems in the near future. Advanced 5G solutions are targeted in the WhALE project (WAtt LEvel transmitters at mm-waves), which is backed by STW. Marco: "And of course, as scientists, we are working on the more challenging building blocks. We are looking for alternative solutions, something that the industry would find extraordinary. The goal is to move to higher frequencies and to transmit, instantaneously large volumes of data. The frequency shift will result in lower available power, which we need to fix with new amplifier concepts. To achieve this there is a need to amplify and combine in this project : smart combining technologies. We are also resourceful in using new 'stuff' like 3D printing in our solutions".


7 July 2016: Opening of CryoLab for Extremely Sensitive Electronic Measurements

The CryoLab of TU Delft's Faculty of EEMCS has been opened on Thursday 7 July by the dean Rob Fastenau. TU Delft scientists from the Tera-Hertz Sensing Group, Jochem Baselmans and Akira Endo, will be leading a team of young scientists and engineers working in the lab on astronomical instrumentation. The first instrument, DESHIMA (Delft SRON High-redshift Mapper), is being developed to be operated on the ASTE telescope in the Atacama Desert in Chile. The goal of the research is to create 3D charts of so-called submillimetre galaxies that, in contrast to 2D charts, also show distance and time.

The large number of superconducting detectors, and the advanced electronics developed at SRON, allows DESHIMA to map a very large volume of space at once. While Endo leads the development of DESHIMA, Baselmans will soon install the next cryostat for testing novel THz array antennas, that will enable his upcoming instrument MOSAIC to target multiple galaxies at once. In the future, the CryoLab is envisioned to also host new coolers from QuTech. Superconducting electronics used for astronomical instrumentation and quantum electronics have much in common, because they both push the limits of what can be observed.


Happy 2016!

Here are some pictures of the New Year Reception of the Microelectronics department

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Summa Cum Laude for Alessandro Urso

Alessandro received this honorary distiction from the University of Ferrara, Italy. His supervisors were Gianluca Setti and Wouter Serdijn. Alessandro will continue his studies as a PhD student at Delft University of Technology, working on wireless enerfy harvesting for autonomous wireless sensor nodes.


BE/ELCA Christmas Lunch

17 Dec 2015 The annual Christmas lunch with international dishes prepared by MSc and PhD students


TU Delft Female Fellowship Tenure Track Openings

Academic openings at all professor levels

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Anteverta overgenomen door Maury Microwave

TU Delft spinout Anteverta-mw overgenomen door Amerikaanse Maury Microwave DELFT, 31 maart 2015 - Het Amerikaanse Maury Microwave Corporation, fabrikant van microgolf-meetsystemen en laboratoriumapparatuur, heeft het jonge Delftse techbedrijf Anteverta-mw, spin-out van de Technische Universiteit Delft, overgenomen. Maury Microwave, gevestigd in Californi?, neemt Anteverta-mw volledig over. De oprichters van het Nederlandse bedrijf blijven echter wel betrokken bij de verdere ontwikkeling. ?Wij zullen vanuit Nederland blijven opereren?, zegt medeoprichter Mauro Marchetti. ?Dit is voor ons de ideale stap om verder te groeien.? Anteverta-mw B.V. ontwikkelt geavanceerde meetapparatuur waarmee transistors en zenders voor telecommunicatie nauwkeurig geanalyseerd kunnen worden. Ook kunnen de optimale eigenschappen van de zenders worden vastgesteld. Hierdoor kan signaalvervorming in mobiele netwerken tot een minimum beperkt worden, wat een betere dataoverdracht mogelijk maakt, terwijl het energieverbruik sterk verminderd wordt. Het bedrijf werd in 2010 opgericht na een promotieonderzoek van Marchetti en Associate Professor Leo de Vreede (Electronics Research Laboratory) van de TU Delft. ?Nog voordat er een spin-out werd opgericht, waren er bedrijven die interesse toonden in onze techniek?, zegt Marchetti. Met de hulp van het TU Delft Valorisation Centre en Delft Enterprises werden patenten aangevraagd een businessmodel ontwikkeld en de eerste fondsen garant gesteld. Anteverta-mw leverde al snel meetsystemen, hardware en software aan bekende organisaties als het Fraunhofer Instituut en NASA en bedrijven als Freescale en NXP. ?Delft Enterprises is de plek waar spinout-bedrijven van de universiteit de handvatten krijgen voor een succesvolle start-up?, zegt Paul Althuis, directeur Delft Enterprises/TU Delft Holding. ?Anteverta-mw is een mooi voorbeeld van de manier waarop de TU Delft maatschappelijk en economische waarde cre?ert uit technische kennis.? Maury Microwave is blij met de aankoop van Anteverta-mw. ?Dit is voor ons een essenti?le stap om onze lange termijn strategie te waarborgen?, zegt Michael Howo, CFO van Maury Microwave. ?Anteverta?s techniek sluit naadloos aan bij onze productgroepen. Het team, inclusief onderzoekers van de TU Delft, kan ons bovendien verder helpen ontwikkelen. ? Over Maury Microwave Corporation/Anteverta-mw Maury Microwave Corporation, opgericht in 1957 in Montclair Californi?, is marktleider in de productie van RF en microgolf-laboratoriumapparatuur, kalibratiestandaarden en systeemcomponenten. Onze service richt zich op de hele microgolf- en RF-industrie met speciale aandacht voor ?RF Device Characterization? en ?Automated Tuner Systems?. Meer informatie over Anteverta-mw en Maury Microwave kunt u opvragen bij Mauro Marchetti via +31(0)15-2787964 of mauro@remove-this.anteverta-mw.com


Wouter Serdijn teacher of the year 2014-2015

Rationale behind his award is that Wouter Serdijn is "a good lecturer, is involved with his students and conducts important research himself". This is actually not the first time that Wouter got elected Teacher of the Year. In 2001 and 2004 he already won the cup. This, however, is the first time that he also has been elected Teacher of the Year for the whole faculty, a new distinction that was established in 2012. Wouter Serdijn is professor in Biomedical Circuits and Systems and heads the Bioelectronics Section at EEMCS.


IEEE IMS award

1st place IMS 2015, JJingchu He , J.H. Qureshi, W. Sneijers, D. A. Calvillo-Cortes and L.C.N.deVreede , A Wideband 700W Push-Pull Doherty Amplifier, IMS 2015, Phoenix, USA, 2015.


Leo de Vreede most entrepreneurial TU Delft scientist

During the annual YES!Delft Network Event on 18 May, the Delft Entrepreneurial Scientist Awards (DESA) were presented for researchers who encourage entrepreneurship. Dr Leo de Vreede of the Department of Microelectronics (EEMCS) was named the most entrepreneurial scientist at TU Delft.

Leo de Vreede is an associate professor at the Electronics Research Laboratory. In 2010, he founded the company Anteverta-mw. Building on the knowledge from his PhD research, the company developed a device that drastically accelerates and improves continuity testing of base stations for mobile telephony. As a result, data transfer is improved and energy consumption reduced. The TU Delft spin-off was taken over earlier this year by the American company Maury Microwave Corporation.

Jury chairman and President of the Executive Board Dirk Jan van den Berg praised De Vreede for his involvement with many spin-off companies and patent requests. The scientists received �valorisation bonuses� of �15,000 and �5,000 respectively.


Congratulations to Prof. dr. Sarro with her royal honour

Professor Lina Sarro, professor of micro-electronics at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science, has been made a Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion, in The Hague.

She received the award because of her original research that resulted in a large scientific body of work and because of her in-depth involvement with her many students. Her pioneering work in the 1980s in the field of infrared sensors led to international acclaim. Since 1987, she has been in charge of research into micro and nanosystems (MEMS and NEMS) at the Else Kooi Lab, which was known previously as the Dimes Institute for Microsystems and Nanoelectronics.

Professor Sarro has published more than 200 articles in scientific journals and has received awards for her work on several occasions. In 2004, she received the Eurosensors Fellow Award, in 2007 the AISEM Career Award, and in 2012 the IEEE Sensors Council Meritorious Award. She is also a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. She has been praised on account of both her scientific work and her unfailing commitment to providing teaching of a high standard.

To her students, from both inside and outside the Netherlands, she is a figurehead. This applies perhaps in particular to female students and academics. In 2005, Professor Sarro became the first female to join the TU Delft Council of Professors. She is dedicated to emphasising the role of female scientists, in the conviction that it is a waste to use only half of our scientific assets. Her outstanding scientific reputation ensures that her voice is heard in this, and in other issues.


PhD Student Huizhen Qian wins Best Paper Award

Miss. Huizhen Qian won the Best Paper Award (1st Place) from her paper entitled as "A 3.5-9.5 GHz Compact Digital Power Amplifier with 39.3% Peak PAE in 40nm CMOS Technology" at the International Wireless Symposium (IWS) 2015, IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-s).

The Award was presented to Huizhen and Dr. Xun Luo by IWS General-Chair Prof. Patrick Yue, Associate Provost for Knowledge Transfer, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and IWS TPC-Chair Dr. Morgan Chen from Nokia Technologies.

Congratulations!


MP Jan Vos visits PARSAX

On Friday 7 November, Jan Vos, MP for the PvdA, visited the TU Delft Climate Institute. The theme of the visit was climate change, TU Delft's research and the usefulness of and need for climate monitoring. The programme included a demonstration of cloud simulations in the Virtual Lab and a visit to the PARSAX radar. Thanks to the rain, it was possible to obtain good live measurements.


Xun Luo's paper top downloaded in IEEE Tr. MTT

Xun Luo's paper co-authored with Dr. Sheng Sun is ranked as the no.1 most downloaded paper of IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, according to the most recent monthly usage statistics.

"Tunable Bandpass Filter With Two Adjustable Transmission Poles and Compensable Coupling", Xun Luo, Sheng Sun, Bogdan Staszewski, Sept. 2014

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Both ESSCIRC papers have been accepted

The papers of Yao Liu (on a phase-domain AGC for Bluetooth LE) and Andre Mansano (on an autonomous wireless temperature tag) have both been accepted for presentation at the upcoming European Solid-State Circuits Conference.


ISCAS 2014 a big success!

Wouter Serdijn (Section Bioelectronics) served as Technical Program Chair for this year's edition of ISCAS. Next year's edition will be held in Lisbon, Portugal. For this edition Wouter Serdijn will change hats and be General Chair.


A new professor

In July 2013, Bogdan Staszewski was appointed TU Delft Antoni van Leeuwenhoek professor. These full professor positions are awarded on a personal basis and are reserved for "young", excellent researchers.

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Agenda

Mastermarket

The MS3/ELCA Mastermarket

MS3/ELCA groups

Dear Students,

Get ready for a journey into the world of cutting-edge research in RF technology, radar & communication!

On February 9, we are organizing the MS3/ELCA Mastermarket. On this occasion we, the MS3 and ELCA sections, will inform you about the Master thesis opportunities in our groups, and demonstrate our research with actual measurements, presenting processed experimental results and showing the added value of this research for applications such as automotive radar, 5G/6G, health and well-being, weather and climate change. As RF systems for radars and communication are sources of huge data, we also demonstrate AI capabilities.

We're opening the doors to our measurement labs: the Earl McCune Labs (21st floor), the anechoic chamber (22nd floor), the mm-wave radar lab (22nd floor), and the surveillance radars (23rd floor and roof).

Mark your calendars for 15:30, and meet us in room HB20.150.

We start with a few short presentations followed by the tour and then we will enjoy the pizza and discuss more!

Please send an email to EWI-ME-Secr@tudelft.nl to let us know you will join (and we can make sure there is enough pizza ;-))

 We look forward meeting you!
The MS3 & ELCA sections


THz Symposium

Dutch Symposium on Terahertz Science and Technology - 3rd Edition


You are cordially invited to join us for the third edition of the Dutch Terahertz Symposium on January 25, 2024. It is a co-organized event between the Delft and Eindhoven University of Technology. With these series of symposiums, we aim to create an environment to exchange information and allow the Dutch Terahertz community to find collaborations and funding opportunities.

 

The 2024 Dutch Terahertz Symposium aims to bring together the Dutch research community and industry interested in the field of terahertz science and technology. There will be six featured talks from both academic and industrial institutions about the latest developments in the field. You can find the list of speakers and topics attached to this email. There will be plenty of opportunities for interaction with each other and inspired further community building.

 

Save the date to join a full day of interesting presentations, Q&As, and panel discussions!

Additional information ...


Microelectronics Research Day 2023

Microelectronics Research Day 2023


TU Delft Microelectronics Research Day
Fully booked!
Registering 2023 not for possible anymore

Additional information ...


EE-NL Day

EE-NL Day


EE-NL Day

Additional information ...


PhD Thesis Defence

Pitch-Matched Integrated Transceiver Circuits for High-Resolution 3-D Neonatal Brain Monitoring

Peng Guo

Peng Guo will defend his PhD thesis entitled

Pitch-Matched Integrated Transceiver Circuits for High-Resolution 3-D Neonatal Brain Monitoring

on Wednesday, Sept. 27th. The layman's talk will be at 12:00, the defence starts at 12:30.

The thesis can be downloaded from the TU Delft repository. Peng's work was part of the MIFFY project.

Livestream of the defence: link

Promotors: Michiel Pertijs and Nico de Jong

Abstract: This thesis presents the design and implementation of integrated ultrasound transceivers for use in transfontanelle ultrasonography (TFUS). Two generations of ultrasound transceiver ASICs integrated with PZT transducer arrays intended for TFUS are presented. In the first generation, a novel AFE design that combines an LNA with the continuous TGC function is realized in a bid to mitigate the gain-switching and T/R switching artifacts. Besides, a new current-mode micro-beamforming design based on boxcar integration (BI) is also implemented to reduce the channel count within a compact layout. In the second generation, the AFE is derived from the first version, while the design focuses on RX backend circuitry and channel-count reduction, including a passive BI-based µBF merged with a charge-sharing SAR ADC, which digitizes the delayed-and-summed signals, and a subsequent multi-level data link, which concatenates outputs of four ADCs. In total, a 128-fold reduction in channel count is finally achieved. The techniques we developed have established the groundwork and removed the initial barriers for an electronics architecture suitable for a wearable 3D TFUS device.


Symposium

Heterogeneous system integration - Driving the EU Chip Act ambitions

The Netherlands have a strong national ecosystem for quantum, photohics and semiconductor technologies, well connected to international key players. This symposium aims to build on this strength by intensifying collaboration among these domains.

Heterogeneous integration plays a crucial role in enabling future quantum, photonics and semiconductor technologies by creating new functionalities and business opportunities through the integration of different chips, technologies and materials into a single system.

This symposium will discuss the importance of heterogeneous integration and its potential for creating more industry and business value. It also aims to cultivate human resources for heterogeneous integration, further strengthening the Dutch ecosystem.

Join us to explore the exciting opportunities that heterogenous system integration can offer for the Dutch ecosystem and beyond, and to be part of the conversation on driving the EU Chip Act ambitions.


PhD Thesis Defence

Yannick Hopf - PhD Defence

Yannick Hopf

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

 

It is my pleasure to invite you to the defense of my PhD entitled:

Integrated Circuits for 3D High-Frame-Rate Intracardiac Echocardiography Probes

 

The event will take place in the Senaatszaal/Aula on Friday, 3rd March 2023 and the schedule is as follows:

  • 09:30 – Layman’s Talk
  • 10:00 – Defense
  • 11:30 – Reception

 

A link for online participation will be shared once provided by the Graduate School.

The thesis can be accessed via:

https://doi.org/10.4233/uuid:7016e74d-c7df-42a8-8257-11326940ad7f

 

While this marks the end of my PhD project at TU Delft, I will still be around as a postdoc until mid April.

So while I would already like to thank you for all the support and good times, this is not a farewell yet and I’m looking forward to my remaining time in the team!

 

Best regards,

Yannick

Additional information ...


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

A Low-Noise Transimpedance Amplifier for Ultrasound Imaging with 40dB Continuous-Time Gain Compensation

Qian Wang

This work presents a low-noise amplifier (LNA) for miniature 3D ultrasound probes. Time gain compensation (TGC) is required to provide continuously variable gain and compensate for the attenuated echo signal, resulting in decreased output dynamic range (DR). As TGC is embedded in the LNA, a power-hungry LNA is no longer needed to handle the full dynamic range of attenuated echo signal. Compared to prior art where TGC is applied after the LNA, this structure reduce die area and power consumption greatly.

The LNA with built-in TGC functionality is comprised of a transimpedance amplifier (TIA) with exponentially increasing feedback resistive network. Since a transducer with a relatively high impedance is targeted, a TIA is utilized to interface with the tranducer and sense the signal current. TGC is implemented in a continuous fashion by tunable resistors so as to alleviate imaging artifacts associated with gain switching moments. The resistive feedback network is achieved by triode transistors with exponentially decreasing gate voltages. Three parallel branches of triode transistors are varied simultaneously to obtain 40dB gain range. Each branch consists of two back-to-back triodes to mitigate non-linearity related to the body effect.

The variable-gain loop amplifier employing a current-reuse topology enables constant closed-loop bandwidth in an energy-efficient way. The first stage is a fixed-gain stage with dynamic biasing to save power at the lowest gain setting. The next two stages are variable-gain stages with variable resistive loads. The load resistor is implemented in the same fashion as the TIA’s feedback resistor to achieve intrinsic gain matching. The last stage is a buffer to provide low output impedance for stability.

The LNA has been designed in 0.18 μm CMOS technology and occupies an estimated die area of 0.0339 mm2. The effective gain range is 40 dB with ±1 dB gain error. The LNA’s noise floor at the highest gain is below 1.15 pA/rt-Hz and its harmonic distortion is better than -40 dB. During 100 μs receive period, the total power consumption is 6mW from a ±0.9 V supply. The LNA featuring small area and high power efficiency is a promising circuit for miniature 3D ultrasound probes.


Microelectronics Colloquium

Advances in Low-Field MRI Hardware Design and Data Processing

Rob Remis

In this talk we discuss several recent advances in low-field Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). We focus on magnet and gradient coil design for a low-field MR scanner in which the strong background field is generated by permanent magnets (Halbach systems). These design problems are treated as inverse source problems, which are severely ill-posed in general. How to obtain approximate (regularized) solutions to these problems is discussed and the practical implementation of these solutions is addressed as well. Several processing algorithms that can handle compressed noisy MR input data are also presented and we illustrate the performance of these algorithms on simulated and measured low-field MR data.

Additional information ...


Microelectronics Colloquium

Sparsity-constrained Linear Dynamical Systems

Geethu Joseph

Abstract: At the intersection of control engineering and signal processing sits the upcoming field of sparse control and state estimation of linear dynamical systems. It deals with linear dynamical systems with control inputs having a few nonzero entries compared to their dimensions. Constraining the inputs to be sparse is often necessary to select a small subset of the available sensors or actuators at each time instant due to energy, bandwidth, or physical network constraints. Bringing together research from classical control theory and compressed sensing, the talk presents a comprehensive overview and critical insights into the conceptual foundations of sparsity-constrained systems, including the formulation, theory, and algorithms. We look at the concrete example of a budget-constrained external agent controlling the opinion of a social network.

Additional information ...


PhD Thesis Defence

Advanced Measurement Techniques and Circuits for Array-Based Transit-Time Ultrasonic Flow Meters

Douwe van Willigen

This thesis describes the design, prototyping and evaluation of matrix-based clamp-on ultrasonic flow meters. Several new measurement techniques are presented as well as an Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) designed for accurate measurement of flow velocity with matrix transducers.

The influence of circuit topologies on the zero-flow performance of ultrasonic flow meters has been analyzed and an algorithm is presented to reduce the offset. With a linear transducer array, flow measurements have been performed via two different acoustic paths, demonstrating the ability to accurately measure flow with array transducers through a stainless-steel pipe wall. In order to improve signal quality, an ASIC has been designed that is able to drive and read-out 96 piezo transducer elements. The ASIC has been characterized electrically and flow measurements have been performed in combination with the linear transducer arrays.

Several new techniques, enabled using transducer arrays, have also been explored. By tapering the amplitude of the transmit signals, spurious waves can be suppressed. An auto-calibration technique has been developed that uses additional acoustic measurements to estimate the diameter of the pipe and the speed of sound in the pipe wall and liquid. Finally, a simulation study has been performed to explore the possibility of exploiting the beam-steering capabilities of transducer arrays to measure flow velocity profiles by using measurements obtained via multiple acoustic paths.

Thesis:
https://doi.org/10.4233/uuid:e2f4b411-3d8e-4b93-b037-096009c59f61

Collegerama (live stream of the defence):
https://collegerama.tudelft.nl/mediasite/play/571eb84f3e724d47b46df7e8d0eb3a7a1d

Additional information ...


PhD Thesis Defence

Integrated Transceiver Circuits for Catheter-based Ultrasound Probes and Wearable Ultrasound Patches

Mingliang Tan

Promotors: Michiel Pertijs and Ronald Dekker

Thesis: link

Collegerama link (live stream of the defence): link

Abstract: This thesis describes the design, prototyping, and experimental evaluation of transceiver ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits) for catheter-based ultrasound probes and wearable ultrasound patches. Various circuit techniques are proposed to address requirements and implementation bottlenecks in these applications. Prototype chips are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of these techniques. To reduce the loading effect of micro-coaxial cables in an ICE probe based on capacitive micro-machined ultrasound transducers (CMUTs), an ASIC prototype including element-level high-voltage pulses and low-noise trans-impedance amplifiers has been implemented. Besides reducing the loading effect from micro-coaxial cables, ASICs play an important role in achieving cable-count reduction, which is crucial for 3-D imaging catheters, such as forward-looking IVUS probes. Circuit techniques are proposed to implement a prototype ASIC which only requires 4 cables to interface with a 2D piezoelectric transducer array. Additionally, to address the challenges in interface electronics for wearable ultrasound patches, a prototype ASIC is presented that contains 64 reconfigurable transceiver channels that can interface with different transducer elements by employing channel-parallelizing techniques.

Additional information ...


Special EI Colloquium

Piero Tortoli, Michael Kraft

Profs. Piero Tortoli and Michael Kraft

Real-time High-Frame Rate imaging: Novel Methods and Applications

Prof. Piero Tortoli
Microelectronics Systems Design Laboratory
University of Florence, Italy

Medical imaging is increasingly based on High-Frame-Rate (HFR) methods, which are in principle capable of producing one frame (or even one data volume) per transmission event. However, achieving such a goal in real-time implicitly involves the transfer and processing of huge amount of data at high rates, and this can be done only through an appropriate experimental setup.

In this talk, the main characteristics of the hardware-based open scanner ULA-OP 256 are briefly reviewed, and its recent advancements, such as the data transfer acceleration obtained through an architectural change, and the possible expansion toward the control of an unlimited number of probe elements, are reported in detail. The “virtual real-time” modality will also be described as ideal to obtain the best performance from specific HFR imaging modalities. Finally, the combination of ULA-OP 256 with properly designed sparse 2-D arrays will be shown suitable for the investigation of full volumes. The talk will be concluded with the presentation of experimental results in a few sample applications, including multi-plane imaging, HFR CFM and HFR vector Doppler.

 

Micro- and Nanosystems at ESAT, KU Leuven

Prof. Michael Kraft
ESAT, Micro- and Nano-Systems
KU Leuven, Belgium

This seminar will give an brief overview of the activities in micro- and nanosystems at the Electrical Engineering Department (ESAT) of KU Leuven. It will describe the available infrastructure and give a short overview of current research activities in the division Micro- and Nanosystems (MNS), which currently comprises 24 PhD students, 4 postdoctoral researchers and 2 technicians.

A selection of current active projects and recent highlights will be presented, including work on:

  • Coupled resonators for mass sensing applications
  • Piezoelectric ultrasound technology arrays for medical imaging and underwater communication
  • Micromachined probes for neuro recording and stimulation
  • Multi-parameter sensing chip for bioreactor condition monitoring
  • Genetic Algorithm for the design of MEMS devices (accelerometers and microgrippers)

Finally, the newly founded Leuven Institute for Micro- and Nano Integration (LIMNI) will be briefly introduced.

Note: This Colloquium precedes the PhD defence of Mingliang Tan, which will take place in the Aula on the same day at 12:00 (layman’s talk), 12:30-13:30 (defence). More information can be found here.


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

A Monolithic Photoplethysmogram (PPG) Sensor

Jixuan Mou
Silicon Integrated

A photoplethysmogram (PPG) is an important optically-obtained bio-sginal that enables convenient daily monitoring of heart rate and Oxygen saturation (SpO2). Most state-of-the-art PPG sensing systems require an off-chip photodiode, and the photodiode’s output parasitic capacitance limits the power-noise trade offs. The objective of this project is to implement a monolithic low-power PPG sensor for heart-rate detection. A novel sensing system has been developed, which has arrays of photogate imagers as front-ends and a compact successive approximation register analog-to-digital converter serving as the readout circuit. The readout power consumption is 0.64 uW at a sampling rate of 40 Hz. The minimum required LED power consumption is predicted to be 3 uW according to the post-layout simulation. The die area is 6.05 mm2 including the pads. Compared with prior art, the readout power consumption reduces by four times and the die area reduces by 3 times. The chip was submitted for fabrication in June in TSMC180nm.


Sensors and CMOS Interface Electronics

Would you like to learn about smart sensors and interface circuits? Register for our course “Sensors and CMOS Interface Electronics”, co-organized by TU Delft and MEAD Education.

The course will take place online, on 8 days between May 9 and May 20, with two lectures per day timed conveniently for participation from anywhere on the globe.

Topics include smart-sensor design, calibration techniques, references, offset-cancellation, analog-to-digital conversion, instrumentation amplifiers and energy harvesting. Moreover, the course features lectures by experts in the field dedicated to smart inertial sensors, magnetic sensors, temperature sensors, image sensors, ultrasonic sensors, capacitive sensors, implantable medical devices and DNA microarrays.


Microelectronics Colloquium

An inclusive EEMCS faculty: An emphatic approach.

Jorge Martinez

Our faculty consists of a vibrant and diverse community. Diversity is a catalyst that allows us to achieve broad knowledge, and a base upon we can drive scientific innovation and improve education.

Moreover, diversity is one of the core values of TUDelft and our faculty and comes with great responsibility. Without equality and inclusion diversity becomes an empty gesture. But realising a safe, equal and inclusive environment requires the participation of everyone in our community. It starts by having a dialog, stablish communication channels at different levels, and debunking taboos with respect to the visible and invisible differences among each other and our students. An empathic approach for this process can play a key role in realising this ambition.

In this colloquium Jorge talks about his experience within EDIT: EEMCS Diversity & Inclusion Team. Join us to know more about EDIT, and for an informal discussion on the current advancements on addressing issues like harassment, discrimination, and gender (in)equality. Or if you want to know what are the channels and means within our faculty and our University to reach for advice or help in case you encounter any issues related to these important topics.

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Microelectronics Colloquium

On my personal journey into artificial intelligence

Justin Dauwels

In this presentation, I will start with a brief introduction to artificial intelligence (AI). I will then elaborate on two types of AI approaches that our research team is investigating: graphical models and neural networks. Next I will summarize some of the main research results of our group. I will review some of the applications of AI that we have been working on over the years, and will present some of our future research plans. I will also say a few words about the spin-off companies that have emerged from our research group. At last, I will conclude with a few thoughts on the potential impact of AI on society and will formulate a few important open research questions in the field of AI.

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PhD Thesis Defence

In-pixel temperature sensors for dark current compensation of a CMOS image sensor

Accel Abarca Prouza

This thesis describes the integration of temperature sensors into a CMOS image sensor (CIS). The temperature sensors provide the in-situ temperature of the pixels as well as the thermal distribution of the pixel array. The temperature and the thermal distribution are intended to be used to compensate for dark current affecting the CIS. Two different types of in-pixel temperature sensors have been explored. The first type of temperature sensor is based on a substrate parasitic bipolar junction transistor (BJT). The second type of temperature sensor that has been explored is based on the nMOS source follower (SF) transistor of the same pixel. The readout system that is used for the temperature sensors and for the image pixels is based on low noise column amplifiers. Both types of in-pixel temperature sensors (IPTS) have been designed implementing different techniques to improve their accuracy. The use of the IPTSs has been proved by measuring three prototypes chips. Also, a novel technique to compensate for the dark current of a CIS by using the IPTS has been proposed.

For those who cannot attend, you can follow it by using this link:
https://collegerama.tudelft.nl/mediasite/play/84dc9775142d44db81aa38e5532c67ca1d


ME colloquium

Presenation on research Wideband CMOS Transmitters

Morteza Alavi

Morteza Alavi will update you on the latest developments that are realized within his research group in the area of "Wideband CMOS Transmitters."

if you would like to join, send an email to secr-me@tudelft.nl

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KNAW-webinar

Techniek in je mobiele telefoon

Leo de Vreede

Want hoe te zorgen voor efficiënt energiegebruik terwijl we juist meer informatie willen uitwisselen? Wat zijn de consequenties van het 5G-netwerk voor de hardware? En hoe combineren we deze geavanceerde techniek met duurzaam en verantwoordelijk gebruik van materialen in de telefoon?

Registreer : https://www.lyyti.fi/reg/techniek-in-je-mobiele-telefoon

Programma

19.00 uur

Welkom en introductie door Jenny Dankelman, hoogleraar technologie voor minimaal-invasieve chirurgie en interventies, Technische Universiteit Delft en Albert van den Berg, hoogleraar sensorsystemen voor biomedische en milieutoepassingen, Universiteit Twente

19.05 uur Bram Nauta, hoogleraar Integrated Circuit Design, Universiteit Twente – Achter de schermen: chips in je smartphone

Dankzij chips kunnen we tegenwoordig heel veel elektronica in een smartphone stoppen. De rekenkracht is al veel meer dan grote supercomputers van weleer, en de data-snelheden voor draadloze communicatie gaan maar omhoog. Achter het scherm van een smartphone gaat een hele wereld schuil, waar transistoren van maar een paar nanometer groot, met vele miljarden op een chip tegelijk aan het werk zijn voor ons. In deze voordracht licht Bram Nauta een tipje van de sluier op van deze onzichtbare wereld, en licht toe hoe bijvoorbeeld een draadloze ontvanger op een chip werkt.

Bram Nauta is hoogleraar IC Design (chipontwerp) aan de Universiteit Twente. Met zijn groep doet hij onderzoek naar elektronische geïntegreerde schakelingen voor draadloze communicatie en sensor/actuator interfaces.

19.25 uur Leo de Vreede, hoogleraar elektronische schakelingen en architecturen aan de TU Delft – 5G: energieslurper of energiezuinig

De exponentiële toename van draadloos dataverkeer heeft onlangs geleid tot de introductie van het vernieuwde mobiele netwerk met 5G-technologie. 5G brengt een aantal radicale veranderingen met zich mee voor de basisstations, die de bouwstenen zijn van een draadloos netwerk. Om de beoogde datasnelheden binnen de beschikbare frequentiebanden te bereiken, maken deze basisstations gebruik van gerichte zendbundels en kleinere cel-afmetingen. Hiermee kan het energieverbruik omlaag gebracht worden. In theorie dan. Want in de praktijk zien we het energieverbruik juist toenemen – hoe kan dat? Kunnen nieuwe, baanbrekende technologieën hierin uitkomst bieden? In zijn lezing praat Leo de Vreede ons bij over de overgang van 4G naar 5G en welke uitdagingen deze met zich meebrengt.

Leo de Vreede is hoogleraar elektronische schakelingen en architecturen aan de TU Delft. De Vreede’s team doet – op dit moment – onder meer onderzoek naar energiezuinige zenders én ontvangers voor mobiele netwerken.

19.45 uur Eva Gouwens, managing director van Fairphone, Amsterdam – Het verhaal van de Nederlands telefoonmaker Fairphone: 'the only smartphone with a heart'

Je telefoon zit boordevol kostbare materialen. Toch blijven oude telefoons na gebruik massaal in lades liggen. We zijn verknocht aan onze mobiele telefoons en gebruiken ze dagelijks intensief. Maar wat weten we eigenlijk van de wereld en industrie achter deze geliefde smartphones? De keten van een smartphone zit van begin tot eind boordevol oneerlijke praktijken. Fairphone probeert deze industrie eerlijker en duurzamer te maken door te laten zien dat het anders kan met een eigen modulaire en eerlijkere smartphone. Van een verantwoorde inkoop van materialen tot de stimulering van het welzijn van arbeiders. De resultaten worden openlijk gedeeld en zorgen voor nieuwe maatstaven in de industrie.

Eind 2017 startte Eva Gouwens bij Fairphone en nam in 2018 het roer over als CEO. Ze hoopt de wereld een stukje mooier te maken door de groei van sociale ondernemingen binnen Nederland te ondersteunen en door een industrie te inspireren om op een positieve manier om te gaan met de zorg voor mens en milieu.

20.05 uur Discussie met panel en publiek onder leiding van Jenny Dankelman en Albert van den Berg

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Ph.D. Thesis Defense of Sining Pan

Resistor-based temperature sensors in CMOS technology

Sining Pan

Time: Monday, 12 April 2021, 12:00-12:15 (layman’s talk), 12:30-13:30 (defense)

Abstract: This thesis describes the principle and design of an emerging type of CMOS temperature sensors based on the temperature dependency of on-chip resistors. Compared to traditional BJT-based designs, resistor-based sensors have higher energy-efficiency, better scalability, and can operate under a wider supply range. Nine design examples are shown in this thesis to demonstrate how resistor-based sensors can be optimized for accuracy, energy-efficiency, or other application-driven specifications. Among all the records the designs achieved, the energy-efficiency improvement is the most impressive: 65× better than state-of-the-art before this research, or only 6× away from the theoretical value.

Please feel welcome to join the live stream: http://collegerama.tudelft.nl/mediasite/play/be505395bbf24debb7cf8fd61454a5261d

Thesis: https://doi.org/10.4233/uuid:28108302-2d9b-4560-a806-8ba6d381812e

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PhD thesis defence

Out-of-band Interference Immunity of Negative-Feedback Amplifiers

Emil Totev

Out-of-band interference is caused by the non-linear behaviour of the components in amplifier circuits, as detailed in Chapter 1. To address that, it is necessary to develop amplifiers with a low IP2 figure, i.e., apply linearisation.

Chapter 2 gives an overview of the existing linearisation techniques and other methods to reduce the effect of non-linear behaviour. A mathematical analysis of a generic negative-feedback amplifier is conducted in Chapter 3 using the Volterra series. As this method often involves complex, cumbersome calculations, a simplified approach is introduced in Chapter 4. Using both the classical and the simplified non-linear analysis tools, a number of new design methods for out-of-band interference immunity enhancement are developed in Chapter 5. These make use of frequency-dependent local feedback, pole position manipulation and non-linear local-feedback compensation. Finally, a design example of non-linear local-feedback compensation in a negative-feedback amplifier is presented in Chapter 6.

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PhD Thesis Defence

Integrated Circuits for Miniature 3-D Ultrasound Probes: Solutions for the Interconnection Bottleneck

Zhao Chen

14:30-15:00 (layman’s talk), 15:00-16:00 (defence)

Please feel welcome to join the live stream

Promotors: Michiel Pertijs and Nico de Jong

Abstract: This thesis describes low-power application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designs to mitigate the constraint of cable count in miniature 3-D TEE probes. Receive cable-count reduction techniques including subarray beamforming and digital time-division multiplexing (TDM) have been explored and the effectiveness of these techniques has been demonstrated by experimental prototypes. Digital TDM is a reliable technique to reduce cable count, but it requires an in-probe datalink for high-speed data communication. A quantitative study on the impact of the datalink performance on B-mode ultrasound image quality has been introduced in this thesis for data communication in future digitized ultrasound probes. Finally, a high-voltage transmitter prototype has been presented for effective cable-count reduction in transmission while achieving good power efficiency. The application of these techniques is not limited to only the design of TEE probes and can be easily extended to the design of other miniature 3-D ultrasound probes, for instance intracardiac echocardiography (ICE) probes and IVUS probes, which are facing similar interconnect challenges with an increased number of transducer elements to enhance imaging quality.

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Microelectronics Colloquium

Artificial Retina: A Future Cellular-Resolution Brain-Machine Interface

Dante Muratore

A healthy retina transduces incoming visual stimuli into patterns of neural activity, which are then transmitted to the brain via the optic nerve. Degenerative diseases, like macular degeneration or retinitis pigmentosa, destroy the ability of the retina to transduce light, causing profound blindness. An artificial retina is a device that replaces the function of retinal circuitry lost to disease. Present-day devices can elicit visual percepts in patients, providing a proof of concept. However, the patterns of neural activity they produce are far from natural, and the visual sensations experienced by patients are coarse and of limited use to patients.

A main hurdle is that there are many types of cells in the retina. For example, some cells respond to increases of light intensity, while other cells respond to decreases of light intensity. In order to reproduce a meaningful neural code, it is crucial to respect the specificity and selectivity of these cells. Because cells of different types are intermixed in the circuitry of the retina, cell type specific activation of this kind requires that a future artificial retina be able to stimulate at single cell resolution, over a significant area in the central retina.

To achieve this goal, we are designing an epi-retinal interface that operates in two modes: calibration and runtime. During calibration, the interface learns which cells and which cell types are available for stimulation, by recording neural activity from the retina. During runtime, the interface stimulates the available cells to best approximate the desired scene. I will present a system architecture we are developing that can accomplish the overall performance goals, and the implications of this architecture for brain-machine interfaces.

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PhD Thesis Defence

Antenna Array Synthesis and Beamforming for 5G Applications: An Interdisciplinary Approach

Yanki Aslan

Realization of the future 5G systems requires the design of novel mm-wave base station antenna systems that are capable of generating multiple beams with low mutual interference, while serving multiple users simultaneously using the same frequency band. Besides, small wavelengths and high packaging densities of front-ends lead to overheating of such systems, which prevents safe and reliable operation. Since the strict cost and energy requirements of the first phase 5G systems favor the use of low complexity beamforming architectures, computationally efficient signal processing techniques and fully passive cooling strategies, it is a major challenge for the antenna community to design multibeam antenna topologies and front-ends with enhanced spatial multiplexing, limited inter-beam interference, acceptable implementation complexity, suitable processing burden, and natural-only/radiative cooling.Traditionally, array design has been performed based on satisfying the given criteria solely on the radiation patterns (gain, side lobe level (SLL), beamwidth etc.). However, in addition to the electromagnetic aspects, multi-beam antenna synthesis and performance evaluation in 5G systems at mm-waves must combine different disciplines, including but not limited to, signal processing, front-end circuitry design, thermal management, channel & propagation, and medium access control aspects. Considering the interdisciplinary nature of the problem, the main objective of this research is to develop, evaluate and verify innovative multibeam array techniques and solutions for 5G base station antennas, not yet used nor proposed for mobile communications. The research topics include the investigation of (i) new array topologies, compatible with IC passive cooling, including sparse, space tapered arrays and optimized subarrays, meeting key requirements of 3-D multi-user coverage with frequency re-use and power-efficient side-lobe control, (ii) adaptive multiple beamforming strategies and digital signal processing algorithms, tailored to these new topologies, and (iii) lowcost/competitive and sufficiently generic implementation of the above array topologies and multi-beam generation concepts to serve multiple users with the same antenna(s) with the best spectrum and power efficiencies. This doctoral thesis consists of three parts. Part I focuses on the system-driven aspects which cover the system modeling (including the link budget and precoding), propagation in mm-wave channels and statistical assessment of the Quality of Service (QoS). Although separate comprehensive studies exist both in the field of propagation/system modeling and antennas/beamforming, the link between the two disciplines is still weak. In this part, the aim of the study is to bridge the gap between the two domains and to identify the trade-offs between the complexity of beamforming, the QoS, and the computational cost of precoding in the 5G multi-beam base station arrays for various use cases. Based on the system model developed, a novel quantitative relation between the antenna SLLs/pattern nulls and the statistical QoS is established in a line-of-sight (LoS) dominated mm-wave propagation scenario. Moreover, the potential of using smart (low in-sector side-lobe) array layouts (with simple beam steering) in obtaining sufficiently high and robust QoS, while achieving the optimally low processing costs is highlighted. For a possible pure non-line-of-sight (NLoS) scenario, the system advantages (in terms of the beamforming complexity and the interference level) of creating a single, directive beam towards the strongest multipath component of a user are explained via ray-tracing based propagation simulations. The insightful system observations from Part I lead to several fundamental research questions: Could we simplify the multiple beamforming architecture while keeping a satisfying QoS? Are there any efficient yet effective alternative interference suppression methods to further improve the QoS? How should we deal with the large heat generation at the base station? These questions, together with the research objectives, form the basis for the studies performed in the remaining parts. Part II of the thesis focuses on the electromagnetism-driven aspects which include innovative, low-complexity subarray based multibeam architectures and new array optimization strategies for effective SLL suppression. The currently proposed multi-beam 5G base stations in the literature for beamforming complexity reduction use either a hybrid array of phased subarrays, which limits the field-of-view significantly, or employ a fully-connected analog structure, which increases the hardware requirements remarkably. Therefore, in the first half of this part, the aim is to design low-complexity hybrid (or hybrid-like) multiple beamforming topologies with a wide angular coverage. For this purpose, two new subarray based multiple beamforming concepts are proposed: (i) a hybrid array of active multiport subarrays with several digitally controlled Butler Matrix beams and (ii) an array of cosecant subarrays with a fixed cosecant shaped beam in elevation and digital beamforming in azimuth. Using the active (but not phased) multiport subarrays, the angular sector coverage is widened as compared to that of a hybrid array of phased subarrays, the system complexity is decreased as compared to that of a hybrid structure with a fully-connected analog network, and the effort in digital signal processing is reduced greatly. The cosecant subarray beamforming, on the other hand, is shown to be extremely efficient in serving multiple simultaneous co-frequency users in the case of a fairness-motivated LoS communication thanks to its low complexity and power equalization capability. Another critical issue with the currently proposed 5G antennas is the large inter-user interference caused by the high average SLL of the regular, periodic arrays. Therefore, in the second half of Part II, the aim is to develop computationally and power-efficient SLL suppression techniques that are compatible with the 5G’s multibeam nature in a wide angular sector. To achieve this, two novel techniques (based on iterative parameter perturbations) are proposed: (i) a phase-only control technique and (ii) a position-only control technique. The phase-only technique provides peak SLL minimization and simultaneous pattern nulling, which is more effective than the available phase tapering methods in the literature. The position-only technique, on the other hand, yields uniform-amplitude, (fully-aperiodic and quasi-modular) irregular planar phased arrays with simultaneous multibeam optimization. The latter technique combines interference-awareness (via multibeam SLL minimization in a predefined cell sector) and thermal-awareness (via uniform amplitudes and minimum element spacing constraint) for the first time in an efficient and easy-to-solve optimization algorithm. Part III of the thesis concentrates on the thermal-driven aspects which cover the thermal system modeling of electronics, passive cooling at the base stations, and the role of antenna researchers in array cooling. The major aim here is to form a novel connection between the antenna system design and thermal management, which is not yet widely discussed in the literature. In this part, an efficient thermal system model is developed to perform the thermal simulations. To effectively address the challenge of thermal management at the base stations, fanless CPU heatsinks are exploited for the first time for fully-passive and low-cost cooling of the active integrated antennas. To reduce the size of the heatsinks and ease the thermal problem, novel planar antenna design methodologies are also proposed. In the case of having a low thermal conductivity board, using a sparse irregular antenna array with a large inter-element spacing (such as a sunflower array) is suggested. Alternatively, for the densely packed arrays, increasing the equivalent substrate conductivity by using thick ground planes and simultaneously enlarging the substrate dimensions is proven to be useful. The performed research presents the first-ever irregular/sparse and subarray based antennas with wide scan multi-beam capability, low temperature, high-efficiency power amplifiers, and low level of side lobes. The developed antenna arrays and beam generation concepts could have also an impact over a broad range of applications where they should help overcome the capacity problem by use of multiple adaptive antennas, improve reliability and reduce interference.

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SSCS WYE Webinar

To Academia, or to Industry, That is the Question.

Kofi Makinwa, Shin-Lien Lu

Abstract:

You are about to finish graduate school or perhaps a young or seasoned professional, contemplating a career transition. Which is better - a career in academia or industry? What are the pros and cons of one versus the other? How can you start exploring and build up your career accordingly? In this webinar, we will interview Dr. Linus Lu, a professor-turned-industry veteran, and Prof. Kofi Makinwa, an industry veteran-turned-professor, who will share their insights and perspectives from their personal journeys in both academia and industry careers. They will also address what triggered their transitions, how they staged their transitions, and offer their crystal ball projections on present and future career prospects in the solid-state-circuits profession.

REGISTER TODAY!

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students presentations

short presentations of MSc students


PhD thesis defense Harshita Thippur Shivamoorthy

Harshita Thippur Shivamoorthy

1


Microelectronics / Medical-NeuroDelta Colloquium

Bioelectronics Medicine

Vasiliki Giagka (TU Delft/Fraunhofer IZM), Daniel Schobben (Founder, Chief Operating Officer, Salvia Bioelectronics)

Abstract Vasiliki Giagka

If the Medicine of the future is Bioelectronic, how does the pill of the future look like? – and what does it take to make it?

In a world where medicine is becoming more personalised the promise of Bioelectronic Medicine is that tiny implants will deliver energy in the form of electrical impulses, replacing pharmaceuticals, their conventional chemical counterparts. But how can we develop such tiny smart and autonomous implants that (need to) seamlessly interact with the tissue and live in the body for decades? How can we protect all the components in such an implant while still maintaining the small form factor and essential flexibility? How can we design electronics such that they remain better protected in such a harsh environment? How can we ensure autonomy under the above restrictions? Eventually, how can we make our medicine more precise, i.e. increase the specificity at which we interact with the tissue? And if we achieve all these, how will the pill of the future look like?

Abstract Daniel Schrobben

Salvia Bioelectronics, working on a novel interface and neurostimulation concept for chronic migraine treatment.

Since several years deep trench isolation (DTI) is used as a Chronic migraine – i.e. 15+ headache-days each month –affects 1.4% of the population, mostly 25-50 y/o women. Pharmacological treatments are available, but these have limited effectiveness and are associated with severe side effects (o.a. dizziness, nausea, weight gain). Many people are refractory to medication; they do not respond or cannot tolerate them.

Salvia develops a unique bioelectronic foil that is placed seamlessly below the skin to stimulate proven neural targets for the treatment of chronic headache. This patent-pending neurostimulation concept is designed for optimal safety and effectiveness and opens the market for this already-validated and long-awaited headache treatment.

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PhD Thesis Defence

3D Elements for Phased-Array Systems: Analysis and Design.

Cristina Yepes

In recent years, radar systems and satellite communications require phased array antennas that are capable of incorporating frequency and angular selectivity while maintaining a low profile. Active phased array antennas must comply with stringent requirements in terms of sensitivity to interference caused by other nearby radiating systems, especially in complex platforms, where a multitude of sensors and radiating systems need to co-exist. In such environments, antennas working at different frequencies can interfere with each other and the implementation of frequency filtering functions with a good out-of-band rejection are needed. Moreover, the interference between different systems can be mitigated by reducing the radiation in the direct path between them. For this purpose, angular filtering functions for pattern shaping can be beneficial. However, standard planar printed circuit board technology puts constraints on the possible antenna elements that can be realized to achieve frequency and angular selectivity. Thus, using new methods such as additive manufacturing technology and 3D printing can provide more degrees of freedom to fabricate complex geometries with a desired operation.

For these reasons, this work focuses on studying new solutions for frequency selectivity with rejection of higher order harmonics, developing a spectral method of moment to study antennas to achieve angular shaping and finding the guidelines needed to design such antennas, and testing additive manufacturing technology to find its suitability at high frequencies for phased array antennas. A bandpass miniaturize-element frequency selective surface with harmonic rejection properties has been designed and manufactured. The design is based on an equivalent circuit model, taking a 3-pole Chebyshev bandpass filter as a starting point, where the inter-layer interaction is only described with a single transmission line representing the fundamental Floquet wave. The prototype consists of five metallic layers, interdigitated patches and grids, separated by dielectric slabs and exhibiting good stability over a wide conical incidence range. A practical case to estimate the effects of placing the FSS in the proximity of a wide-scanning wideband connected array of dipoles has been performed. The performance of the array combined with the FSS has been experimentally characterized, de fining the optimal distance between FSS and array to avoid the propagation of surface waves between both structures, showing a good response within the FSS bandwidth and a good frequency rejection outside of this bandwidth.

A spectral method of moments for tilted elements in free space and in the presence of a backing reflector for infinite and finite arrays has been derived. Such method allows to study dipole and stacked dipole elements and find the guidelines needed to design, in a future, a phased array antenna with an undesired angular range where suppression of gain is intended. The parametric study concluded that the main parameters that shapes the pattern are the inter-element distance between elements and the tilt angle of the elements. The requirements to achieve an asymmetric radiation pattern are a directive element and an inter-elements distance higher than half wavelength, while the tilt of the elements allows to shape the gain levels in the suppressed angular region. To validate this study a linear arrays consisting of tilted dipoles loaded with artificial dielectric layers has been fabricated. The prototype shows a good comparison with simulations and measurements.

A simple design of a dipole antenna has been derived and fabricated using Stereolithography process as an additive manufacturing method. The polymer and metal paste used in the process have been characterized and results have been discussed. A good agreement between simulations and measurements has been achieved after including the geometric deviations found in the fabricated antenna. The fabrication process for high frequencies appears to be prone to systematic errors and the challenges related to the use of additive manufacturing technology for high frequency RF antennas and components has been discussed.

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PhD Thesis Defence

Capacitively-Coupled Bridge Readout Circuits

Hui Jiang

This Ph.D. dissertation describes the design and realization of energy efficient readout integrated circuits (ROICs), that have an input referred noise density < 5 nV/√Hz and a linearity of < 30 ppm, as required by Wheatstone bridge sensors used in precision mechatronic systems. Novel techniques were developed, at both the system-level and circuit-level, to improve the ROIC’s energy-efficiency, while preserving its stability and precision. Two prototypes are presented, each with best-in-class energy efficiency, to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed techniques.

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PhD Thesis Defence

High-Speed Interfaces for Capacitive Displacement Sensor

Sha Xia

This thesis describes the theory, design, and implementation of high-speed capacitive displacement sensor interface circuits. The intended application is to readout the capacitive displacement sensor used in a servo loop, where the measurement time needs to be low to ensure loop stability. The work employs baseline-capacitance cancellation technique to reach a high energy-efficiency and high conversion speed.


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

A Dynamic Zoom ADC for Audio Applications

Efraïm Eland

Audio ADCs used in high-fidelity portable audio and IoT are not only required to have high linearity and dynamic range (DR) but are also expected to be very energy efficient and occupy minimum silicon area. Zoom-ADCs combine a coarse asynchronous SAR with a fine Delta-Sigma Modulator (∆ΣM) to satisfy these requirements. Existing zoom ADC architectures are limited in terms of SQNR due to the need for the fine ADC to have some over-ranging. That, together with the leakage of the SAR ADC’s quantization noise, “fuzz,” into the audio band, puts a lower limit on the sampling frequency.
This thesis describes the design of a zoom-ADC for an audio bandwidth of 20kHz. Using a 4-level quantizer, instead of a conventional 1b quantizer, mitigates the adverse effects of over-ranging, making it possible to keep a very low sampling frequency. On top of that, it makes use of a simple, low power analog “fuzz” cancellation scheme to prevent the SAR quantization noise from leaking into the audio band.
The chip has been prototyped in a standard 160nm CMOS technology and consumes 339μW with 107.7dB DR and 105dB SNDR. Compared to state-of-the-art ADCs with a similar bandwidth, this work achieves a 2x lower OSR (fs = 2.5MHz), significantly improving the energy efficiency and achieving a Schreier FoM of 185.4dB.


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Rail-to-rail input and output amplifier for ADC front-end applications.

Shubham Khandelwal

This work presents a unity-gain stable operational amplifier for an ADC front-end application. The op-amp focuses on delivering high linearity with low noise and offset while driving a switched capacitor load. To accomplish this the op-amp employs Current Spillover, Chopping and Gain-Boosting techniques. The op-amp achieves THD of -108 dB at 10kHz, offset of 2.7 µV and input noise density of 19.3 nV/√Hz while consuming 504 µW; resulting in an NEF of 12.28. The op-amp is fabricated in 0.16 µm CMOS technology and occupies 0.1 mm2 area.


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Electrothermal Filters for No-Trim Temperature Sensors

Daguang Liu

This thesis describes the design and characterization of thermistor-based electrothermal filters (ETFs) intended for use in high-accuracy CMOS temperature sensors. ETFs have been previously realized by placing an on-chip heater in close proximity to an on-chip thermopile, which then picks up the thermally-delayed signals generated by the heater. This delay is a well-defined function of absolute temperature and can be used as the basis for highly accurate temperature sensors. In this work, the thermopiles are replaced by a thermistor, resulting in greater sensitivity and higher resolution. Measurements show that the new ETFs can achieve 3.6mK resolution in a conversion time of 1s and 0.2°C(3 σ) untrimmed inaccuracy from 30 °C to 60°C.


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

A PLL-based eddy current displacement sensor for button applications

Matheus Ferreira Pimenta

This thesis presents an eddy current sensor (ECS) for button readout applications. The interface embeds the coil sensor in a digitally controlled oscillator (DCO) and uses a highly digital phase locked loop (PLL) to convert the displacement information into a digital output.
The sensor achieves more than 12bit effective resolution, which translates into an equivalent displacement resolution in excess of 10nm RMS. The interface consumes less than 235µA from a 1.8V supply, resulting in a very power efficient architecture.


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

An ASIC with Bipolar High-Voltage Transmit Switching for a Single-Cable Intra-Vascular Ultrasound Probe

Rishabh Nagarkar

An ASIC is presented for intra-vascular ultrasound imaging. Despite being connected via a single coaxial cable, it is able to pass arbitrary high-voltage bipolar signals to the transducers for acoustic imaging. The thesis talks about the need to reduce the cable count to one and reviews the existing work in literature. It builds upon an existing single-cable design and focuses on the transmit part to make it compatible with a large number of ultrasound imaging modes by allowing it to pass high-frequency signals up to 20MHz and bipolar signal voltages up to +/-25V. The chip is phantom powered and thus its power supply and signals are transmitted on the same cable. The transmit switch designed for this ASIC is powered by and controlled by an on-chip low-voltage supply and circuitry. The prototype ASIC has been designed in TSMC 180nm HV BCD Gen2 technology. This single-cable design has 16 elements for transmit and 64 elements in the receive mode and has been evaluated using simulations.


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

A low-noise amplifier for ultrasound imaging with continuous time-gain compensation

Qiyou Jiang

This work presents a low-noise amplifier (LNA) for ultrasound imaging with built-in continuous time-gain compensation (TGC), which compensates for the time-dependent attenuation of the received echo signal and thus significantly reduces its dynamic range (DR).

The proposed design combines the LNA and TGC functions in a single variable-gain current-to-current amplifier. Compared to conventional ultrasound front-ends, which implement the TGC function after an LNA that needs to handle the full DR of the echo signal, this approach can highly reduce the power consumption and the size. Compared to earlier programmable gain LNAs with discrete gain steps, the continuous gain control avoids switching transients that may lead to imaging artefacts.

The TGC function is realized by a novel feedback network consisting of a double differential pair that feeds a fraction of the output current back to the input. This fraction can be changed continuously using a control voltage that is applied to the gates of the differential pairs, to realize a gain range from -20 dB to +20 dB. To achieve an approximately constant closed-loop bandwidth in the presence of the changing feedback factor, a loop amplifier has been implemented whose gain is changed along with the feedback factor by dynamically changing its bias currents. This loop amplifier employs a current-reuse architecture to achieve high power-efficiency. In addition, a variable bias current source has been designed to appropriately bias the TGC feedback network. By employing a similar double differential pair topology as in the feedback network, this current source provides the required low noise at the highest gain setting and high current at the lowest gain setting within the available headroom.

The LNA with built-in TGC function has been realized in 180nm CMOS technology. It has been optimized to interface with a 7.5 MHz capacitive micro-machined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT). Simulation results show that it achieves a 3dB bandwidth higher than 40 MHz across the full gain range. At the highest gain setting, its input current noise is 0.96 pA/rt-Hz at 7.5 MHz. This leads to an input dynamic range of 93 dB, which is compressed into an output dynamic range of 53 dB by means of the 40 dB variable gain. The amplifier consumes 10.8 mW from a 1.8V supply, and occupies an estimated 320 x 320 um2 die area.


PRORISC and SAFE 2019

PRORISC and SAFE 2019

PRORISC is an annual conference on Integrated Circuit (IC) design and SAFE is an annual conference on Microsystems, Materials, Technology and RF-devices. Both conferences are organized together within the three technical Dutch universities Twente, Delft and Eindhoven. The conference is organized by PhD students and is intended for PhD candidates to expand their network and share their research ideas, which provides a unique opportunity for future collaborations. Each year, one of the technical universities will be responsible for the organization of the two conferences. In 2019 the PRORISC will be held at at the campus of Delft University of Technology.

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Microelectronics Colloquium

Quantum Computer on a Chip

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.

As part of our startup company, 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.

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Inauguration Earl McCune and Cicero Vaucher

Who's talking, who's listening?

Earl McCune, Cicero Vaucher
TU Delft

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Who's talking? Who's listening?

It is all about (RF/mm-wave) Communication & Sensing!

Speakers: Patrcik Reynaert (KU Leuven, Belgium), Yiao-Hong Liu (IMEC), Bram Nauta (UT Twente), Peter Baltus (TU/e), Leo Vreede (TU de

Concept program

09:35 Welcome Leo de Vreede

09:45 Bram Nauta (University of Twente)

Abstract

With more upcoming frequency bands used for wireless communication, there is a growing need for transmitters and receivers that can operate at different frequencies in a flexible way. In this presentation a forgotten technique called N-path filters is highlighted, and examples of flexible channel filtering using this technique directly at RF are given. 10:15 Peter Baltus (Technical University Eindhoven)

Unconventional Wireless Applications

Abstract

Although it might be hard to believe, there are actually wireless applications beyond 5G. Some of them are rather unconventional if not downright weird, and for some reason I tend to get involved in projects exploring technologies for such applications more often than could be expected on a purely statistical basis. In this presentation I’ll discuss some of these applications and the related technologies that we’re working on. 10:45 break

11:15 Patrick Reynaert (University Leuven, Belgium)

Polymer Microwave Fibers: who's waiting for it?

Abstract

Using polymers or plastics as a flexible guided dielectric channel, together with mm-wave signals and Silicon chips, was recently proposed as a complementary alternative to optical and copper. Often referred to as Polymer Microwave Fibers (PMF), the mechanical robustness and EMI tolerance are key differentiators for this communication approach. Compared to optical communication, no EO/OE conversion is needed since the mm-wave signal is directly launched into the fiber with an antenna. Furthermore, the connectors have a much higher robustness compared to optical connectors. Compared to copper wireline, far less EMI issues arise since no metal is being used in the channel. Several demonstrators have been developed both at Universities and companies, revealing the strengths and weaknesses of this approach. This presentation will give an in-depth discussion of the topic, discuss some of the implementation challenges and will give a good understanding of the benefits and drawback of PMF, and conclude with an outlook of the future of PMF. 11:45 Leo de Vreede (Technical University Delft)

Digital Transmitters for Sub-6GHz Wireless Applications

Abstract

Digital-intensive transmitters (TX) concepts are rapidly gaining interest, since they can convert the high-speed digital baseband data directly into the transmitting RF signal, while allowing very compact and cost-effective integration. In addition, their digital (switching) nature opens up (new) possibilities in achieving high energy efficiency, spectral purity and frequency-agile operation. This talk will describe the strengths, challenges and promises of these digital inspired TX solutions for mMIMO applications and sub-6GHz wireless Applications.

12:15 lunch (Restaurantzaal)

13:00 Yao-Hong (IMEC)

Listen to your gut: swallable digital transmitter design

Abstract

Swallable smart pills are going to revolutionize the next-generation diagnosis tool of the digestive tract. This talk will introduce the design challenges of the RF transceiver targeted for such applications. A case study on an ultra-low power and digital-intensive RF transmitter will also be provided." 13:30 wrap-up Kofi Makinwa (Technical University Delft)

13:45 conclusion


Micro electronics colloquium

High performance data converters; Rethink analog IC design

Nan Sun, Muhammed Bolatkale

Nan Sun: Rethink Analog IC Design

I will present several unconventional data conversion architectures. First, I will talk about how we can make use of noise, which is usually deemed as an undesirable thing, to estimate the conversion residue and increase the SNR of a SAR ADC. It is an interesting example of stochastic resonance, in which the presence of noise can lead to not SNR degradation but SNR enhancement. Second, I will talk about how we can perform data conversion below the Nyquist rate by exploiting the sparsity of the input signal. I will show two example compressive sensing ADCs and how the effective ADC conversion rate can be reduced by 4 times but without losing information. Third, I will show how we can prevent the seemingly inevitable kT/C noise in a Nyquist-rate pipelined ADC by using a continuous-time SAR based 1st-stage. This can substantially reduce the requirement on the ADC input capacitance, greatly reducing the ADC driver power and reference buffer power

Biography of Nan Sun

Nan Sun is Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He received the B.S. from Tsinghua in 2006 and Ph.D. degree from Harvard in 2010. Dr. Sun received the NSF Career Award in 2013. He serves on the Technical Program Committee of the IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference and the IEEE Asian Solid-State Circuit Conference. He is an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems – I: Regular Papers, and a Guest Editor of the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits. He also serves as IEEE Circuits-and-Systems Society Distinguished Lecturer from 2019 to 2020.

Muhammed Bolatkale: High Performance Data Converters

A next generation automotive radio receiver, an all-digital Class-D amplifier, and an advanced Bluetooth transceiver have one thing in common: they rely on high-performance data converter architectures to enable best in class performance. This talk will give an overview of GHz-sampling data converters, especially focusing on wideband delta-sigma and hybrid data converter architectures. We will touch upon state-of-the-art systems and circuit level designs fabricated in advance CMOS nodes.

Bio Muhammed Bolatkale

Muhammed Bolatkale is Senior Principle Scientist at NXP Semiconductors and part-time Associate Professor in the Electronics Instrumentation Laboratory at Delft University of Technology. He received his B. Sc. (high honors) degree from Middle East Technical University, Turkey, in 2004 and the M. Sc. (cum laude) and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands, in 2007 and 2013. Since 2007, Dr. Bolatkale has worked for NXP Semiconductors, specializing in wideband Delta-Sigma ADCs for wireless communications and automotive applications. Dr. Bolatkale received the ISSCC 2016 and 2011 Jan Van Vessem Award for Outstanding European Paper and the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits 2016 and 2011 Best Paper Award.

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Microelectronics Colloquium

Introducing new CAS professors

Andrew Webb, Borbála Hunyadi

Andrew Webb:

MRI is one of the most important clinical imaging modalities for diagnosis and treatment monitoring. Recent trends have been towards ever higher magnetic fields and operating frequencies. This talk outlines some of the technical challenges faced by very high field and conversely very low field MRI, and the roles that electromagnetics and signal processing can play in improving image quality

Borbala Hunyadi

Electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) record a mixture of ongoing neural processes, physiological and non-physiological noise. The pattern of interest is often hidden within this noisy mixture. This talk gives an overview of signal processing and machine learning techniques to address this issue by capturing the spatiotemporal structure in the (multimodal) data. Special attention is given to tensor-based blind source separation techniques, with applications in epilepsy research.


Radio-frequency engineering for space

Václav Valenta
European Space Agency

The key challenges in the design of radio-frequency instruments for space will be reviewed. Space environmental aspects will be discussed as well as the practical measures that need to be implemented to assure a high level of reliability. Selected examples will be presented, covering a wide spectrum of applications: from new satellite communication trends, such as active reconfigurable antennas to future scientific RF instruments that will be placed on other planets. Special focus will be put on high-power amplification concepts and integration solutions.

Speaker Bio: Václav Valenta was born in Czechoslovakia and received Master and Doctoral degrees in radio engineering and mathematics from the Brno University of Technology in the Czech Republic and Université Paris-Est in France, respectively. In the past, Dr. Valenta has designed and demonstrated active and passive radar systems operating up to a frequency of 140 GHz. His expertise is in the area of multi-functional RFIC design (SiGe BiCMOS and III-V) covering key functions from amplification, frequency generation/conversion, modulation/demodulation, and heterogenous RFIC integration. Dr. Valenta is currently with the European Space Agency, RF Equipment and Technology Section, running and supporting several R&D projects. Dr. Valenta is responsible for the development of the radio-science instrument "LaRa", which is a scientific payload that will be launched to Mars in the frame of the mission ExoMars 2020.


PhD Thesis Defence

Aleksandar Jovic

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(B)ELCA Festival

BELCA Band, Doe Normaal, Rotterdam CentraAL


PhD Thesis Defence

Surface Acoustic Mode Aluminium Nitride Transducer for micro-size liquid sensing applications

Thu Hang Bui

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ME tenure track colloquium

Radar; the eyes of the future autonomous vehicles, The Next Generation of Wireless TX, V

Morteza Alavi, Masoud Babaie, Faruk Uysal

Faruk Uysal (Microwave sensing, signals and systems) Radar; the eyes of the future autonomous vehicles

Radar is becoming the eyes of autonomous vehicles due to its all-weather, day and night capabilities. The coexistence of multiple radars in close proximity soon will be an issue with the increasing number of radar-equipped devices such as autonomous cars on the roads. To address this emerging issue in autonomous vehicles, the first part of my presentation concentrates on current problems; interference mitigation and advanced angle of arrival estimation; as well as future technologies like phase-coded radar, to support distributed radar processing. Finally, I will mention how other radar systems also take advantages of distributed radar network.

Morteza Alavi (Electronics research laboratory) The Next Generation of Wireless TX

Wireless technologies such as 5G and WiFi-6 are on the horizon and developing at a faster pace than ever before. These life-changing communication networks will impact every sector of society. They are increasing the data throughput more than 100×, boosting the network’s latency more than 15×, expanding the area coverage, facilitating the adoption of more new technologies such as augmented/virtual reality (AR/VR), machine learning (ML), drones, self-driving cars, and enabling the massive deployment of Internet of Thing (IoT) devices by connecting more machines to the wireless networks. Offering such advantages requires massive signal bandwidth, less complexity, more agility, considerable radiated power, and remarkable signal processing. More importantly, the energy efficiency and form factor of such systems are significantly critical. To address these challenging issues, this talk reflects on some of ELCA’s ongoing research activities focusing on advanced transmitters ranging from UHF up to W frequency band.

Masoud Babaie (Electronics research laboratory) RF Battleground for Biomedical and Quantum Applications

The focus of the first half of the presentation is on the design of a radar transceiver for detecting vital human signs such as heart and respiration rates. The proposed radar operates at ~7GHz UWB frequency band due to the lower path loss compared to millimeter-wave frequencies. However, it needs to satisfy the stringiest FCC requirements on the transmitting peak, average, and sideband power spectral density (PSD). Hence, it is challenging not impossible for pulse-based radar to fulfill the side-lobe PSD requirement without compromising detection range. On the other hand, frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radars have low sideband emission. However, they can easily violate the UWB average PSD requirement due to their continuous operation. To tackle the abovementioned challenges, a heavily duty-cycled FMCW radar with an innovative chirp generation is introduced to satisfy the FCC requirements while achieving a record-low power consumption of 680W. I then switch to the second part of the presentation on the design of cryogenic frequency synthesizers and low-noise amplifiers for future quantum computers. Unfortunately, the channel current noise of CMOS transistors does not scale linearly by the temperature due to the dominance of flicker and shot noise at the cryogenic temperatures. It directly degrades the receiver (PLL) noise figure (phase noise). To tackle this issue and truly benefit from the operation in the cryogenic temperatures, the first CMOS parametric amplifier is revealed here.

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PhD Thesis Defence

Free standing interconnects for stretchable electronics

Shivani Joshi

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Microelectronics Colloquium

Material Engineering for Stability Improvement of Perovskite Solar Cells

C.P. Wong
Georgia Tech

Organolead halide perovskites have recently emerged as a fascinating light harvesting material that combines the advantages of simple fabrication process and excellent electronic properties. The power conversion efficiency (PCE) of perovskite solar cells (PSCs) has been rapidly improved from 3.8% to 23.3% within the past several years. In contrast to the stunning rise in efficiency, the instability of the PSCs is its Achilles’ heel. The instability issue of the whole device originates not only from the perovskite layer itself, but also from the use of doped organic charge transport materials, such as spiro-MeOTAD. This talk is to provide material strategies to improve the stability of the organolead halide perovskite materials as well as other functional layers in PSCs. To improve the air-stability of perovskite films prepared from two-step sequential deposition by simultaneously eliminating PbI2 residue and improving the crystallinity of the perovskite films. We developed PbI2 thin films with nano-pores and tunable crystal sizes, which enabled full conversion of PbI2 to MAPbI3. A large perovskite crystalline domains, and that the impurity-free, lead to reduced trap states and improved air-stability of the perovskite thin films. The second part of my talk is devoted to improve the stability of the entire PSC device by developing a solution-processed NiOx hole-transport layer, as the hygroscopic nature of the NiOx film suppresses the diffusion of water molecules to the perovskite, and it is also insusceptible to heat. As a result, the PSCs with a structure of FTO / TiO2 / Perovskite / NiOx / Au demonstrated remarkable air-stability and thermal stability. By further modifying of the NiOx / metal interface by CuSCN, we further realized high-efficiency PSCs with excellent air stability, exhibiting nearly no efficiency degradation after exposed to air for 4 months. Furthermore, the ion migration-induced instability issue through incorporating extrinsic alkali cations (i.e., Rb+, K+, Na+, or Li+) into the perovskite. The size-dependent interstitial occupancy of the extrinsic alkali cations in the perovskite lattice was proposed and verified for the first time through density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Such interstitial doping method suppressed I- ion migration in the bulk of perovskites, thus resulting in reduced I-V hysteresis of the PSCs, weakened poling effects and improved photo stability of wide-bandgap mixed-halide perovskites.


Microelectronics Colloquium

Tenure track colloquium

Sten Vollebregt, Massimo Mastrangeli, Daniele Cavallo

Wideband phased arrays for future wireless communication terminals, Daniele Cavallo (TS group)

Wireless data traffic will grow exponentially in the next years, due to the proliferation of user terminals and bandwidth-greedy applications. To address this demand, the next generations of mobile communication (5G and beyond) will have to shift the operation to higher frequencies, especially to millimetre-wave (mmWave) spectrum (30-300 GHz), that can provide extremely high-speed data links. To enable mm-wave wireless communication, mobile terminals such as smartphones will need phased arrays antennas, able to radiate or receive greater power in specific directions that can be dynamically steered electronically. However, to cover the different 5G mm-wave bands simultaneously (28, 39, 60 GHz, …) and to achieve total angular coverage, too many of such antennas should be on the same device: the main bottleneck is the insufficient space available to place all antenna modules. Therefore, I propose to investigate novel phased array antenna solutions with very large angular coverage and ultra-wide frequency bandwidth, to massively reduce the overall space occupation of handset antennas and overcome the current limitations of mobile terminal antenna development.

Towards smart organs-on-chip, Massimo Mastrangeli (ECTM Group)

Organs-on-chip are microfluidic systems that enable dynamic tissue co-cultures under physiologically realistic conditions. OOCs are helping innovating the drug screening process and gaining new fundamental insights in human physiology. In this talk, after a summary of my past research journey, I will describe how the ECTM group at TU Delft is envisioning the use microfabrication and materials science to embed real-time sensing and actuation in innovative and scalable OOC platforms.

Emerging electronic materials: from lab to fab, Sten Vollebregt (ECTM group)

Due to their nm-size features and often unique physical properties nanomaterials, like nanotubes and 2D materials, can potentially outperform classical materials or even provide functionality which cannot be obtained otherwise. Because of this, these nanomaterials hold many promises for the next generation of devices for sensing & communication and health & wellbeing.

Unfortunately, many promising applications of nanomaterials never reach sufficient maturity to be implemented in actual products. This is mostly because the interest in the academic community reduces once the initial properties have been demonstrated, while the risk for industrialization is still too high for most companies to start their own R&D activities. My goal is to bridge these two worlds by investigating the integration of novel nanomaterials in semiconductor technology and demonstrating the scalability of novel sensing devices. In this talk, I will give examples on how carbon nanotubes, graphene and other emerging nanomaterials can be used in the next generation of sensing devices.


Elca colloquium

System Dewsign Issues in Polar Transmitters .. and why it makes me grumpy all the time

Dr. Rick Booth


5G Phased Arrays

International Summer School on 5G Phased Arrays

Understanding of phased array operation requires multi- disciplinary approach, which is based on the antenna array, microwave circuit and signal processing theories. By bringing these three areas together, the school provides integral approach to phased array front-ends for 5G communication systems.

At the school the phased array foundations will be considered from antenna, RF technology and signal processing points of view. Realization of 5G capabilities such as high data-rate communication link to moving objects will be discussed. The education will be concluded by a design project.

The summer school is open for all young specialists and researchers from both industry and academia. The attendees should have basic knowledge about EM, electrical circuits and signal processing (graduate courses on electromagnetic waves, electrical circuits including microwave (RF) circuits, and signal processing).

Topics:

  • Foundations of antenna arrays
  • Antenna array topologies for 5G applications
  • Analog and digital beamforming in antenna arrays
  • Front-end architecture and performance
  • 5G applications and system requirements

    Additional information ...


Conferences

PRORISC 2018 Conference

Annual conference on Integrated Circuit (IC) design, organized within the three technical Dutch universities Twente, Delft and Eindhoven

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Conferences

SAFE 2018 Conference

Annual conference on Micro-systems, Materials, Technology and RF-devices, organized within the three technical Dutch universities of Twente, Delft and Eindhoven.

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Smart Sensor Systems 2018

Smart Sensor Systems 2018

This course addresses the design and development of smart sensor systems. After a general overview, various key aspects of sensor systems are discussed: measurement and calibration techniques, the design of precision sensor interfaces, analog-to-digital conversion techniques, and sensing principles for the measurement of magnetic fields, temperature, capacitance, acceleration and rotation. The state-of-the-art smart sensor systems covered by the course include smart magnetic-field sensors, smart temperature sensors, physical chemosensors, multi-electrode capacitive sensors, implantable smart sensors, DNA microarrays, smart inertial sensors, smart optical microsystems and CMOS image sensors. A systematic approach towards the design of smart sensor systems is presented. The lectures are augmented by case studies and hands-on demonstrations.

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PhD Thesis Defence

Front-End ASICs for 3-D Ultrasound: From Beamforming to Digitization

Chao Chen

Program:
12:00 - 12:15 Introductory presentation
12:30 - 13:30 Public defense
13:45 - 14:00 Diploma ceremony
Address: Senaatszaal of the Aula Congress Center

SUMMARY
This thesis describes the analysis, design and evaluation of front-end application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) for 3-D medical ultrasound imaging, with the focus on the receive electronics. They are specifically designed for next-generation miniature 3-D ultrasound devices, such as transesophageal echocardiography (TEE), intracardiac echocardiography (ICE) and intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) probes. These probes, equipped with 2-D array transducers and thus the capability of volumetric visualization, are crucial for both accurate diagnosis and therapy guidance of cardiovascular diseases. However, their stringent size constraints, as well as the limited power budget, increase the difficulty in integrating in-probe electronics. The mismatch between the increasing number of transducer elements and the limited cable count that can be accommodated, also makes it challenging to acquire data from these probes. Front-end ASICs that are optimized in both system architecture and circuit-level implementation are proposed in this thesis to tackle these problems.
The techniques described in this thesis have been applied in several prototype realizations, including one LNA test chip, one PVDF readout IC, two analog beamforming ASICs and one ASIC with on-chip digitization and datalinks. All prototypes have been evaluated both electrically and acoustically. The LNA test chip achieved a noise-efficiency factor (NEF) that is 2.5 × better than the state-of-the-art. One of the analog beamforming ASIC achieved a 0.27 mW/element power efficiency with a compact layout matched to a 150 µm element pitch. This is the highest power-efficiency and smallest pitch to date, in comparison with state-of-the-art ultrasound front-end ASICs. The ASIC with integrated beamforming ADC consumed only 0.91 mW/element within the same element area. A comparison with previous digitization solutions for 3-D ultrasound shows that this work achieved a 10 × improvement in power-efficiency, as well as a 3.3 × improvement in integration density.

The dissertation can be found in the TU Delft repository: http://doi.org/10.4233/uuid:a5002bb0-4701-4e33-aef6-3c78d0c9fd70

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Dutch Ultra Low Power Conference

The medicine of the future you’ll need to take only once, and it’s a bioelectronic one

Wouter Serdijn

The Dutch Ultra Low Power Conference brings together Belgian and Dutch professionals and companies involved in the development and application of devices with ultra low power technologies. It targets engineers, designers and technical managers in the advanced field of energy harvesting and ultra low power and energy-efficient designs. The keynote will be given by Wouter Serdijn, professor of bioelectronics at Delft University of Technology.

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MEST Symposium

Mini Symposium on Hardware Security

Three talks from leading companies in the industry: Brighsight, Intrinsic ID and Riscure with the following topics:

  1.    “Past , Present and Future of Hardware Attacks on Smart Cards and SOCs” by Gerard van Battum, Sr. Security Evaluator at Brightsight;
  2.     “Removing the barriers of securing a broad range of IoT devices” by Dr. Georgios Selimis, Senior Security Engineer, Intrinsic ID;
  3.    “How to use Deep Learning for hardware security testing?” by Marc Witteman (MSc), Chief Executive Officer, Riscure.
Organized by the Micro-electronic Systems and Technology Association (MEST).

Free but required registration at the link below.

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

FPGA based real time detection and signal, processing of electric nanosecond Partial Discharge (PD) pulses to extract parameters facilitating PD classication.

Ayush Joshi

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The BELCA music festival!

Annual Music Festival of the Sections Bioelectronics and Electronics

The BELCA Band, Doe Normaal, Rotterdam Centraal

Annual music festival with two invited bands and of course the BELCA band. Highly recommended. Free entrance.


MSc BME thesis presentation

System Building Blocks for Mathematical Operators Using Stochastic Resonance -- Application in an Action Potential Detection System

Insani Abdi Bangsa

MSc thesis presentation on Stochastic Resonance Systems for Biomedical Applications


Bioelectronics Colloquium

On the Relationship between Nyquist Rate and Healthcare: Silicon Systems to Close the Sub-Sampling Gap in Health Screening and Monitoring

Amin Arbabian, PhD (Stanford University)

Abstract
Advances in healthcare technologies have mainly focused on therapeutics, interventional procedures, and “late-stage” diagnostics. These steps have undergone significant improvements, leading to higher survival rates and enhancements in quality of life. Nevertheless, current trends are unsustainable due to the inadequate outcomes on specific critical diseases and skyrocketing national healthcare costs. An important example is cancer, where mortality rates have not seen major improvements, even with the tremendous technological advances in diagnostic imaging tools over the last four decades.

In this talk I will outline our efforts in better marrying technology and healthcare with new systems that 1) enable continuous “Nyquist” imaging and screening to enable preventive/predictive care, and 2) introduce smart implants for precision monitoring and closed-loop therapies. Preventive screening through continuous monitoring has the potential to fundamentally revamp our understanding of disease as well as targeted therapy. Today, the human body is monitored infrequently, perhaps on an annual basis and with a low “resolution”. This is in contrast with advanced electronic systems (many of which our community designs and ships), which are frequently monitored and calibrated. I will summarize a few example projects that aim to address these issues, including portable, semiconductor-based, “Tricorder” imaging systems, ultrasound-powered implantable devices that can measure, detect, and act upon local physiological changes through closed-loop neuromodulation or “electroceuticals”, and finally our new investigation of a noninvasive methods of neuromodulation based on ultrasonic excitation.

Biography
Amin Arbabian received his Ph.D. degree in EECS from UC Berkeley in 2011 and in 2012 joined Stanford University, as an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering. His research interests are in mm-wave and high-frequency circuits and systems, imaging technologies, and ultra-low power sensors and implantable devices. Prof. Arbabian currently serves on the steering committee of RFIC, the technical program committees of RFIC and ESSCIRC, and as associate editor of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Letters (SSC-L) and the IEEE Journal of Electromagnetics, RF and Microwaves in Medicine and Biology (J-ERM). He is the recipient or co-recipient of the 2016 Stanford University Tau Beta Pi Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, 2015 NSF CAREER award, 2014 DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA) including the Director’s Fellowship in 2016, 2013 Hellman faculty scholarship, and best paper awards from several conferences including ISSCC (2010), VLSI Circuits (2014), RFIC symposium (2008 and 2011), ICUWB (2013), PIERS (2015), and the MTT-S BioWireless symposium (2016).

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Microelectronics IoT Pitch

and Summer Drink

All ME-MSc’s and ME-employees are cordially invited to make a 2-minute pitch for an interesting and unexpected IoT application.

The format is free like the level of seriousness and feasibility are but there is a meaningful purpose as the event is meant to inspire the definition of technology integrating projects in the field of IoT. The pitches will be ‘graded’ by measuring the intensity of the applause. The pitch wil be followed by the yearly Summer Drink of the Microelectronics Department.


MSc thesis presentation

A Low-Complexity CMOS Receiver for UWB siqnals

Ernesto Huaman

Ernesto's MSc thesis presentation on localization using UWB and its implementation in CMOS


Conferences

Eurosensors dead-line


Channelization & Classification of Broadband Signals

Ramesh Harjani
University of Minnesota

Our continued desire for increased wireless bandwidth for small and light portable devices have forced the development of novel transceiver architectures that accommodate wideband contiguous and non-contiguous data streams. This talk focuses on the use of discrete time analog signal processing for the development of low power, wideband transceivers for blind modulation classification of signals. Blind signal classification is critical for spectrum surveillance and future heterogeneous wireless networks. This project is a joint collaboration with experts in signal processing, low power VLSI design and analog/RF design. In this talk we will first focus on the analog architectures/tradeoffs for channelizing wideband signals and then briefly describe algorithmic and digital VLSI implementation details. In particular, we focus on hybrid filter banks based on analog FFTs and polyphase FFTs to channelize wideband signals.


Professoren in de Arena

Professoren in de Arena: De bionische mens, van protheses naar upgrades

Wouter Serdijn, Just Herder, Harrie Weinans, Project March

Op 28 maart gaan drie hoogleraren, waaronder Wouter Serdijn, met elkaar in debat over 'de bionische mens'. Wat is er mogelijk en hoe ver kun, wil en mag je gaan? In drie korte minicolleges praten de heren u bij en worden ze vervolgens stevig aan de tand gevoeld door cabaretier, columnist en TU-docent Jasper van Kuijk. In de discussie die daarop volgt, wordt het publiek van harte uitgenodigd mee te doen.

De sprekers van deze avond zijn:

Just Herder - Professor of Interactive Mechanisms and Mechatronics

Harrie Weinans - Professor of Tissue Biomechanics and Implants

Wouter Serdijn - Professor in Bio-Electronics

Project March

Deze editie van ‘Professoren in de Theaterarena’ wordt georganiseerd i.s.m. het ‘Explore your Brain’ evenement van de TU Delft Library in het kader van het 175 jarig bestaan van de TU Delft.

Over Professoren in de Arena

In nauwe samenwerking met de TU Delft en de universiteiten van Leiden en Rotterdam zetten wij in een theatrale setting steeds drie spraakmakende hoogleraren op het podium rondom een actueel thema. Deze onderwerpen worden van verschillende kanten belicht, vanuit de harde wetenschap en/of maatschappelijke en ethische hoek. In een magazine-achtig format met korte colleges, stand-up colums wordt u bijgepraat en doet u mee in de discussie.

Locatie: Theatercafé, Theater de Veste

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Microelectronics Colloquium

Microelectronics Department Colloquium

Daniele Cavallo, Vasiliki Giagka, Fabio Sebastiano, Rob Remis

On Wednesday March 15 the next Microelectronics colloquium wil take place, including four lectures by staff members.

Please register online by completing the form.

  • Vasso Giagka
    Flexible bioelectronic medicines

    Abstract: Bioelectronic medicines are the next generation of neuromodulation devices: small active three-dimensional neural interfaces able to modulate nerve activity by targeting a specific neural region. They aim to treat a number of conditions, such as diabetes and asthma, in a tailored (per individual) and reversible fashion, avoiding the side effects of conventional drug-based interventions (pharmaceuticals). They achieve so by recording signals from the respective nerves, extracting information and using it as feedback to electrically stimulate the neural region in a closed-loop manner.

    Current technologies for active implants have not yet managed to achieve the miniaturisation and integration levels required for the development of bioelectronic medicines. For such breakthrough devices, novel concepts need to be explored, developed, and tested.

    In this talk I will present my current activities as well as my vision on realizing the first flexible three-dimensional graphene active implant, for safe chronic neural stimulation and recording from the peripheral nerves.

  • Fabio Sebastiano
    Cryo-CMOS for Quantum Computing: does it work?

    Quantum computing holds the promise to change our lives by efficiently solving computing problems that are intractable today, such as simulation of quantum systems for synthesis of materials and drugs. A quantum computer comprises both a quantum processor and a classical electronic controller to operate and read out the quantum devices. The quantum processor must be cooled at cryogenic temperature in order to show quantum behavior, thus making it unfeasible to wire thousands of signals from the cryogenic quantum devices to a room-temperature controller.

    While this issue can be solved by placing also the electronic controller at cryogen¬ic temperature, which electronic technology is the best choice for its implementation? This talk will address the challenges of building such electronic controller, and answer whether a standard CMOS technology can be employed for the required analog and digital circuits operating at 4 K and below.

  • Daniele Cavallo
    Advanced Antenna Arrays for Modern Radar and Communication Systems

    Abstract: Several of today’s radar and wireless communication applications are shifting their operation to higher frequency to fulfil more demanding requirements on resolution, compactness and data rates. For this reason, there is a growing need to develop low-cost integrated circuit transceivers working at millimeter and sub-millimeter waves.

    However, on-chip antennas are currently characterized by very poor radiation efficiency and extremely narrow bandwidth. My approach of combining the concepts of connected arrays with artificial dielectrics will solve the inefficiency problem and enable high-efficiency on-chip antenna designs.

    Similar concepts can be also realized at microwave frequencies in printed circuit board, allowing for low-cost phased array antennas with state-of-the-art performance in terms of scan range, bandwidth and polarization purity.

  • Rob Remis
    Imaging with Waves

    We present an overview of our current wave field imaging and inversion research. Effective inversion strategies for important applications in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), nano-optics, and subsurface monitoring will be discussed. In particular, dielectric shimming (shaping of the radio frequency field in MRI) as well as inversion algorithms that determine the dielectric properties of various tissue types based on measured MRI data will be considered, and state-of-the-art model-order reduction techniques for large-scale wave propagation problems will be discussed as well.


Inverse Problems in Electromangetics

Challenges and New Frontiers

IEEE AP-Sdistinguished Professor Andrea lecturer: MASSA
University of Trento and Director Eledia Research Center

Inverse problems arise when formulating and addressing many synthesis and sensing applications in modern electromagnetic engineering. Indeed, the objective of antenna design, microwave imaging, and radar remote sensing can be seen as that of retrieving a physical quantity (the shape of the radiating system, the dielectric profile of a device under test, the reflectivity of an area) starting from (either measured or “desired”) electromagnetic field data. Nevertheless, the solution of the well‐known theoretical features (including ill‐posedness, non‐uniqueness, ill‐conditioning, etc.) of electromagnetic inverse problems still represents a major challenge from the practical viewpoint. Indeed, developing and implementing robust, fast, effective, and general‐purpose techniques able to solve arbitrary electromagnetic inverse problem still represent a holy grail from the academic and industrial viewpoint. Accordingly, several ad‐hoc solutions (i.e., effective only for specific application domains) have been developed in the recent years

In this framework, one of the most important research frontiers is the development of inversion techniques which enable the exploitation of both the information coming from the electromagnetic data and of that which is provided by prior knowledge of the scenario, application, or device of interest. Indeed, exploiting a‐priori information to regularize the problem formulation is known to be a key asset to reduce the drawbacks of inversion processes (i.e., the its ill‐posedness). However, properly introducing prior knowledge within an inversion technique is an extremely complex task, and suitable solutions are available only for specific classes of scenarios (e.g., comprising sparseness regularization terms).The aim of this talk is to provide a broad review of the current trends and objectives in the development of innovative inversion methodologies and algorithms. Towards this end, after a review of the literature on the topic, different classes of methodologies aimed at combining prior and acquired information (possibly in an iterative fashion) will be discussed, and guidelines on how to apply the arising strategies to different domains will be provided, along with numerical/experimental results. The open challenges and future trends of the research will be discussed as well

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MS3 seminar

Capabilities and Research Activities at the University of Oklahoma Advanced Radar Research Center

Prof. Nathan A. Goodman
The Advanced Radar Research Center (ARRC) at the University of Oklahoma

The Advanced Radar Research Center (ARRC) at the University of Oklahoma consists of a vibrant group of faculty and students from both engineering and meteorology, focused on solving challenging radar problems and preparing the next generation of students. Through the collaborative nature instilled in its members, the ARRC has proven effective at developing synergy between science and engineering in the field of radar. The ARRC resides in state-of-art Radar Innovations Laboratory, a one-of-a-kind and unrivalled facility for radar research, development, and education. This 35,000-sqft facility includes microwave labs, advanced fabrication capability, and two anechoic chambers.

Bio Prof. Goodman: Nathan A. Goodman received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Kansas, Lawrence, in 1995, 1997, and 2002, respectively. From 1996 to 1998, he was an RF systems engineer for Texas Instruments, Dallas, TX., and from 2002 to 2011, he was a faculty member in the ECE Department of the University of Arizona, Tucson. He is now a Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Director of Research for the Advanced Radar Research Center at the University of Oklahoma, Norman.


MS3 seminar

MS3 Master Event

Come to learn about our group and current Master Thesis Projects...

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Terahertz Sensing group seminar

Design of mm-wave, multifunction ICs for data communication and remote sensing

Prof. Herbert Zirath
Chalmers University of Technology

FLYER OF THE SEMINAR___________
The transmission rate of wireless data in the mobile networks is doubling every year due to the increased usage of mobile multimedia services like streaming video, music, television, data transfer in smartphones and laptop-computers etc. This tendency will require continuously improved telecom infrastructure regarding both base-stations and the backhaul communication links. Today, the E-band (71-76, 81-86, 92-95 GHz) is employed increasingly in the networks, allowing multi Gbps data rate. In a near future however, the E-band will be crowded, and novel, higher frequency bands will have to be employed as well. Several hundred Gigahertz bandwidth is available for new communication and sensing applications just waiting to be exploited at frequencies above 100 GHz. Until now, components for making such ‘THz-systems’ have been too expensive, too bulky, too power hungry and nonsufficient in terms of generating enough power for communication systems. With newly developed RFIC-processes, it is now possible to design multifunctional integrated circuits, realizing a full ‘frontend on a chip’ at frequencies well beyond 100 GHz. Recent results from ongoing projects aiming at enabling new applications for next generation mobile infrastructure, 5G, and security imaging, up to 340 GHz will be reported. So far, critical building blocks such as LNA, PA, VCO, modulator and demodulator, frequency multiplier, power detector and mixer have recently been developed, and results will be reported. Multifunction front-end circuits such as complete receive and transmit RFICs, mixed signal designs for co-integrated baseband/frontend ICs, and radiometer ICs have also been developed and will be reported as well, including the newly developed D-band (110 to 170 GHz) frontend chipset demonstrating state-of-the-art bitrate of beyond 40 Gbps.

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Non-instrusive near-field characterization of Microwave circuits and devices

Rui Hou

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Microelectronics Introduction Colloquium

Introduction 3 new Tenure Trackers

Masoud Babaie, Morteza Alavi, Faruk Uysal

On December 12 we organize the next Microelectronics Colloquium to introduce three new Assistant Professors (Tenure Trackers) of the Microelectronics department. They are happy to present a lecture about their research.

The colloquium start at 15.00 hrs. there will be a drink afterwards in the foyer.
Location: Theatre of Culture Builing (38) Mekelweg 10.
Please register online if you want to attend, latest December 5.

  • Masoud Babaie: Pushing The Limits of CMOS Circuits for Emerging Technologies
    Within the next few years, quantum processors, Fifth Generation (5G) cellular systems and the wireless Internet-of-Things (IoT) are expected to see significant deployment to realize more integration between the physical and digital worlds, promising enormous computation power, high data rate communications and enabling more objects to be remotely sensed and controlled.

    This talk will address some of the main challenges in the design and implementation of IoT devices, mm-wave 5G transceivers, and cryogenic CMOS controller for quantum computers. An overview of my past and ongoing research activities will be also presented, with emphasis on novel solutions to improve power efficiency and spectral purity of RF/mm-wave transceivers.

  • Morteza Alavi: Universal Transmitters for 5G
    Today, our daily activities are intertwined with the Internet. The ever-growing demand to swiftly get access to the data-cloud systems leads to huge data traffic. In order to seamlessly transmit and receive these gigantic data, _ 40 GB, agile radio-frequency (RF) transceivers are inevitable.

    These radios must be capable of supporting the current and future communication standards such as 5th generation of wireless mobile communications. The ultimate goal is that they can be implemented as universal radios whose modes of operation can be defined by their clients. To address these demands, RF transmitters are currently reinvented and are directed towards digital-intensive architecture. In this short presentation, we will briefly describe the strengths,possibilities, and challenges that exist for these advanced transmitters. First and foremost, the concept of RF-DAC based transmitters will be introduced. Next, the talk will review various RF-DAC based transmitters that have already been implemented at ELCA. Eventually, the presentation will concisely unveil the future directions of the research of these software-defined transmitters at ELCA.

  • Faruk Uysal: Distributed Radar Networks: Beyond a single radar
    The number of operational radar is rapidly increasing due to the growing demand of the remote sensing. Software defined radio and emerging single-chip radar technology make use of radars in every aspect of life such as autonomous driving, safety and security applications. With the increase of active transmitters, spectrum management and coexistence started to become a concern for some radar systems. In this talk, the previous applications of waveform, frequency agility will be reviewed to bring multi-functionality to the modern radar system. Finally, we will discuss the future research for distributed radar networks and how to fuse data from various radars to acquire different aspects of a target to be viewed simultaneously.


MSc BME Thesis Presentation

Wireless Power Transfer and Optogenetic Stimulation of Freely Moving Rodents

Farnaz Nassiri Nia

Animal studies are commonly used to test the feasibility and effectiveness of promising novel neuroscience research ideas. One such new technique is optogenetic stimulation, which refers to stimulation of the brain by means of light. Current optogenetic stimulation methods use tethered setups and, typically, the animal-under-study is put into a fixed position. This introduces stress, an obvious reduction in animal welfare, and may thus influence the experimental results. Hence, an untethered setup is highly desirable. Therefore, in this thesis, we propose a complete wireless optogenetic stimulation setup, which allows for full freedom of movement for multiple rodents-under-study in a 40x40x20 cm environment.

This thesis includes a thorough design space exploration and the subsequent development of: an inductive wireless link, a wireless receiver module that resides on the animal, and novel micro-LED array implants.


PhD Thesis Defence Mina Shahmohammadi

RF CMOS Oscillator for Cellular Applications

Mina Shahmohammadi

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PhD Thesis Defence Andre Mansano

Radio Frequency Energy Harvesting and Low Power Data Transmission for Asynchronous Wireless Sensor Nodes

Andre Luis Mansano

SUMMARY

Since the Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to be the new technology to drive the semiconductor industry, significant research efforts have been made to develop new circuit and system techniques for autonomous/very low-power operation of wireless sensor nodes. Very low-power consumption of sensors is key to increase battery lifetime or allow for battery-less (autonomous) operation of sensors, which contributes to reducing or preventing the high maintenance costs of battery supplied sensors and reduce the amount of discarded batteries.

This thesis, entitled Radio Frequency Energy Harvesting and Low Power Data Transmission for Autonomous Wireless Sensor Nodes, presents very low-power consumption circuit and system techniques combined with energy harvesting that allow the creation of autonomous wireless sensor nodes. This work focuses on three main challenges:
1) how to improve energy harvesting efficiency,
2) how to minimize power consumption of data transmission and
3) howto combine low-power techniques and energy harvesting in a system.
These challenges are addressed in this thesis with on-PCB and integrated circuit (IC) solutions.

The efficiency of radio frequency (RF) energy harvesting is improved by proposing a new topology of a charge-pump rectifier. The proposed topology uses a voltage boosting network to compensate for the voltage drop in the transistors. The new topology is presented as well as a non-linear circuit analytical analysis. Simulation results are compared to the analytical analysis and measurement results of the circuit that has been fabricated in a 0.18 um CMOS technology and operates at 13.53 MHz. Although the efficiency of RF energy harvesting is improved using the above technique, at the same time, low power techniques in data transmission should be developed to save energy. Pulse width modulation and impulse transmission techniques to minimize power consumption have been developed and are presented in this thesis.

The developed pulse modulation circuitry has been fabricated in 0.18 um CMOS technology as part of a System on Chip (SoC). The new impulse transmitter topology for low-voltage low-power operation has been fabricated on PCB with micro-wave discrete components. Theoretical analysis, simulations and measurements results are shown to prove the impulse transmitter concept.

The circuits developed are integrated in a SoC with energy harvesting to prove the concept of autonomous wireless sensor nodes. Two sensor nodes have been designed and measured: one for autonomous temperature monitoring and the second for autonomous ECG monitoring. Both designs operate from wireless power without the use of batteries.

Finally, the work developed in this thesis is analyzed and future research possibilities are discussed.

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

A 0.6V Low Noise Current Generator for Bio-Impedance Measurements in 40nm CMOS

Yao Li


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Structured electronic design of high-pass ΣΔ converters and its application to cardiac signal acquisition

Samprajani Rout

Abstract:

With the bandwidth of the ECG signal extending from sub-Hz to 200 Hz, a major challenge in developing the analog front-end responsible for digitizing the analog signal for an ECG readout system lies in implementing the large time-constants on chip due to area constraints. While techniques to obtain very large time constants exist, they are heavily limited by both linearity and accuracy, which clearly dictates the need for alternative structures.

In this thesis, a ΣΔ converter is used for its noise-shaping property to digitize the acquired signal. A structured electronic design methodology based on state-space forms is proposed to develop high-pass (HP) ΣΔ converter topologies. As opposed to conventional low-pass or band-pass ΣΔ, a generalized signal transfer function which includes the high-pass characteristic is used. The proposed HP ΣΔ topologies satisfy the signal transfer function, which is high-pass characteristic in this application and the noise transfer function, which is a 2-nd order noise shaping in this case. Furthermore, the noise contribution of each of the integrators is evaluated and the topologies are compared in terms of their total noise contribution. Finally, one of the structures is implemented in 0.18 um technology as a final step of verification.

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

A 0.6V, 1uW, 0.95µVrms low-power low-noise instrumentation amplifier for ECG/BioZ in 40nm CMOS

Qiuyang Lin

Abstract:

This thesis presents a low-power low-noise instrumentation amplifier designed to be implemented in 40 nm CMOS technology and operating from a 0.6 V supply, intended for use in electrocardiogram (ECG) and bio-impedance (BioZ) signal acquisition. This instrumentation amplifier has one ECG channel, one BioZ channel and allows both signals to be measured at the same time.

The core of the system is an AC-coupled instrumentation amplifier. A DC servo-loop is applied to handle large differential electrode offset (>300 mV) and a positive feedback loop is used to boost the input impedance (>100 MOhms). This instrumentation amplifier achieves low noise (<1 uVrms over a bandwidth of 150 Hz), large CMRR (>100 dB) while only consuming 1 uW of power. The instrumentation amplifier has a noise efficiency factor (NEF) of 2.4 and it occupies only 0.1 mm^2 chip area.

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Special Celebrative Seminar: New model of Sino-Dutch R&D cooperation


Since the establishment of TU Delft's Beijing Research Centre (BRC) in 2012, 10 PhD researchers have been enrolled for this unique program in close cooperation with our Chinese Academic Partners. We are very pleased that the first two BRC PhD candidates will have their PhD thesis defence on September 19 2016, in the Aula of Delft University of Technology.

To celebrate this important milestone, we would like to invite you to join a special seminar after the defences, about the New model of Sino-Dutch R&D cooperation, to share the experiences, look to the future and raise the glass together.

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

t.b.d. (multi-channel backscattering for reading out the ECoG of freely moving rodents)

Ide Swager

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PhD thesis defence Leonardo Vera Villarroel

Wideband circuits for optical communications

Leonardo Vera Villarroel


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

A compact multi-electrode system to measure in vivo electrical activity in the olivocerebellar system -- measuring sub-threshold oscillations and action potentials spatially and over time

Matthijs Weskin

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Energy harvesting wireless networks: A new frontier for communication and information theory

Aylin Yener
Pennsylvania State University

Wireless communication networks composed of devices that can harvest energy from nature will lead to the green future of wireless, as energy harvesting offers the possibility of perpetual network operation without adverse effects on the environment. By developing effective and robust communication techniques to be used under energy harvesting conditions, some of the communication devices in a heterogeneous network can even be taken off the grid. Energy harvesting brings new considerations to system level design of wireless communication networks, leading to new insights. These include randomness and intermittency of available energy, as well as additional system issues to be concerned about such as energy storage capacity and processing complexity. The goal of this talk is to furnish the audience with fundamental design principles of energy harvesting wireless communication networks which is an emerging area. The focus will be on identifying optimum transmission scheduling policies in various settings, and the ensuing algorithmic solutions. Time permitting we will also go into the information theory of energy harvesting communications, which brings in new challenges taking into account energy availability and storage at the channel use level.

Biography

Aylin Yener is a professor of Electrical Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA since 2010, where she joined the faculty as an assistant professor in 2002. During the academic year 2008-2009, she was a Visiting Associate Professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, CA. Her research interests are in information theory, communication theory and network science with recent emphasis on green communications, information security and networked systems.

She received the NSF CAREER award in 2003, the best paper award in Communication Theory in the IEEE International Conference on Communications in 2010, the Penn State Engineering Alumni Society (PSEAS) Outstanding Research Award in 2010, the IEEE Marconi Prize paper award in 2014, the PSEAS Premier Research Award in 2014, and the Leonard A. Doggett Award for Outstanding Writing in Electrical Engineering at Penn State in 2014. She is a fellow of the IEEE. Dr. Yener is an elected member of the board of governors of the IEEE Information Theory Society for the term 2015-2017.

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BELCA Festival

The bi-annual music festival of the Bioelectronics and Electronics groups in the /Pub at EEMCS

BELCA festival

What started out as a way to showcase the talent of faculty members in 2010 has grown into a small-scale festival, a collaboration between the Bioelectronics Department and the Electronics Research Lab. This year it's on July 1 at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science's cellar /Pub. "We'll have two external bands plus the BELCA band. As well as music there'll be dancing and shows too," said Farnaz Nassiri Nia, festival coordinator. "People are already rehearsing for their performances including some pop, jazz and Rammstein. We've tried to make it multicultural so there'll be Indian, Italian, Brazilian and Iranian songs." It's not ticketed, so you can just turn up and enjoy the show. The /Pub can accommodate 300 people.

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Physical Foundations Underlying Green Information and Communication Technologies

Earl McCune

There are physical limitations on how much energy efficiency can be realized from any actual hardware used to implement any communications standard.? Experience shows that in most instances the signals adopted by the standard committee place an additional ceiling on the achievable energy efficiency using that hardware.? For example, there is hardware that is capable of providing more than 60% energy efficiency under ideal conditions, but for some standardized signals the maximum achievable efficiency drops to 7%.? This drop in achievable efficiency is predictable, and such analyses should become part of standards committee deliberations.? Such a low operating efficiency is not compatible with IoT, 5G, and other upcoming Standards objectives.

This presentation was originally given to the IEEE Green-ICT Initiative Steering Committee at the IEEE Board meeting series in New Jersey on June 16, 2016.? It establishes the reasons why such efficiency ceilings occur and shows how to predict them.? Further, recipes are provided on how it is physically possible to simultaneously achieve high bandwidth efficiency and optimum energy efficiency ? along with the PSD impacts that come with these more Green-optimized signal modulations.

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Bioelectronics/ELCA Christmas Lunch

The annual Christmas lunch with international dishes prepared by MSc and PhD students


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Sensor Selection and Bit Allocation in WSNs with Realistic Digital Communication Channels

Hongrun Zhang

For energy management in wireless sensor networks, only the sensors with most informative measurements are activated to operate. How to select sensors that make good tradeoff between performance and energy consumption is what many researchers are focusing on. Existing solutions assume analog data model, i.e., the data from sensors collected by a center node, called fusion center, are analog measurements. In practical application, due to limitations of energy of sensors and bandwidth of wireless channel, original measurements are usually compressed before being transmitted to the fusion center. In addition, transmitted signals are usually distorted by wireless channel effects, therefore it is possible that the received data are corrupted with errors. In this thesis, we consider two compressive techniques: one-bit quantization and multi-bit quantization. In one-bit quantization, an indicator message is generated in a sensor according to whether the original measurement is larger than a threshold or not. In multi-bit quantization, the original measurements are quantized to multiple bits and only the most significant bits are reserved. The indicators or the most significant bits are then transmitted through realistic wireless channel to the fusion center for it to process. By these ways, the transmitted signals are digital, and they may flip into opposite values by the effects of wireless channels. For one-bit quantization case, we develop a sensor selection approach, based on convex programming. For multi-bit quantization, we extend the sensor selection to bit allocation and propose a novel algorithm to determine the number of bits to transmit for each sensors, which is also based on convex programming. In both cases we consider the effects of wireless channels, which are characterized as bit error rate. Particularly, for the multi-bit quantization, numerical results show that the bit allocation can further reduce the cost that we defined compared with existing solutions where transmitted data are assumed to be analog.


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Low power digital baseband architecture for wireless sensor nodes

Yuteng Hao

This thesis presents a digital baseband design for an upcoming wireless standards: IEEE 802.11ah. It is a branch of Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11) standards. Compared with the previous Wi-Fi standards, this new standard has larger coverage range and consumes less energy. It is particularly suited for energy-constrained sensor applications.? In contrast to the Digital Baseband (DBB)s of other Wi-Fi standards, this design consumes much less power. The basic modulation method of the system is Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) and the detailed algorithms are explored. To prove the robustness of the system, some error tests for the system are performed. A gate-level hardware design and the synthesis netlist are also presented to prove the low-power design. Based on the synthesis results, a series of optimization is done to lower the power consumption.? The DBB has been implemented in 40nm Low-power CMOS process to prove the concept.? It includes the key blocks of this system. Measurement results show that the DBB for IEEE 802.11ah is suitable for low power applications. The power consumption of this DBB is around 200 - 400 uW, which is hundreds times less than that of the traditional 802.11 baseband.

Thesis work performed at Holst Centre

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QuTech Seminar

Designs for quantum information hybrid devices and systems

Prof. Kae Nemoto
National Institute of Informatics, Quantum Information Sciences, Tokyo, Japan

There have been many architectures for quantum computer and quantum information devices proposed, yet we face a gap between these proof-of-principle idea and feasible quantum devices. We focus on an integrated cavity device based on a single diamond NV center to identify the problems and obstacles by integrating necessary elements to perform computational tasks.

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MEST Symposium

THE SILICON CRYSTAL BALL

Symposium on silicon technology -?where speakers from industry, academia and from leading research?centers?within?Netherlands and from abroad will cover the latest advancements and challenges in silicon technology.

Speakers

  • P. de Jager( ASML) Lithography beyond EUV
  • E. Vreugdenhil (ASML) 3D-NAND Flash: vertical stacking of new thin-film gate-all-around transistors
  • M. Pelgrom (PelgromConsulting) Statistical design has the future
  • Z. Tokei (IMEC) Wiring in 3D
  • F. Rosenboom (TU Eindhoven) Plasma etching for continued semiconductor scaling
  • S. Hamdioui (TU Delft) Computing for Data-Intensive Applications: Beyond CMOS and beyond Von Neumann
  • J. Dorgelo (Marvell) Terabit NAND Flash comes with advanced error correction

Open to all

It is FREE for all?Msc, PhD, PD and Professors in Micro-electronics, Computer engineering and Telecommunications. Don't forget to REGISTER?at?www.mest-delft.nl

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MSc market

Leo de Vreede, Marco Spirito, Chris Verhoeven

Dear all, ELCA organizes a M.Sc. project market,

Monday, March 16 from 16.00-18.00 in the Snijderzaal.

Please indicate your presence to Marion de Vlieger in view of the pizza ordering. Most project descriptions have already been uploaded on black board (ET4254) and the elca website projects, more will follow. We hope to see you on Monday! Leo, Marco, Chris and Xun

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PhD Thesis Defence

Sensor management for surveillance and tracking. An operational perspective. March 5, 12.00 Aula, Senaatszaal. Promotor A. Yarovoy, co- promotor, H. Driessen

Fotios Katsilieris

Defence, March 5, 12.00 Aula, Senaatszaal. Sensor management for surveillance and tracking. An operational perspective. In the literature, several approaches to sensor (including radar) management can be found. These can be roughly grouped into: a) rule-based or heuristics; b) task-based; c) information-driven; and d) risk/threat-based. These approaches are compared in this dissertation and it is found that there is not a single approach that is both Bayes-optimal and takes into account explicitly the user requirements in different operational contexts. In order to overcome the challenges with the existing approaches, this dissertation proposes managing the uncertainty in higher-level quantities (as per the JDL model) that are directly of interest to an operator and directly related to the operational goal of a radar system. The proposed approach is motivated by the threat assessment process, which is an integral part of defence missions. Accordingly, a prominent example of a commonly used higher-level quantity is the threat-level of a target. The key advantage of the proposed approach is that it results in Bayes-optimal sensor control that also takes into account the operational context in a model-based manner. In other words: a) a radar operator can select the aspects of threat that are relevant to the operational context at hand; and b) external information about the arrival of targets and other scenario parameters can be included when defining the models used in the signal processing algorithms, leading to context-adaptive sensor management.

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MEST event

TU Delft in ISSCC 2015

Program:

9:00 Prof. Kofi Makinwa Welcome
9:10 A. Carimatto A 67,392 SPAD PVTB-Compensated Multi-Channel Digital SiPMwith 432 column-Parallel 48ps 17b TDCs for Endoscopic Time-of-Flight PET
9:50 M. Shahmohammadi A 1/f Noise Up-conversion Reduction Technique Applied to Class-D and Class-F Oscillators
10:15 R. Quan A 4600um2 1.5oC (3s) 0.9kS/s Thermal-Diffusivity Temperature Sensor with VCO-Based Readout
10:40 Break
10:55 L. Xu A 110dB SNR ADC with +/-30V Input Common-Mode Range and 8uV offset for Current Sensing Applications
11:35 Y. He A 0.05-mm2 1-V Capacitance-to-Digital Converter Based on Period Modulation
12:00 H.Jiang A 30-ppm <80-nJ Ring-Down-Based Readout Circuit for Resonant Sensors

There will be free pizza from 12:45 to 13:15


A drone for everyone

Drones we know mainly from the news, unmanned aircraft that in distant countries eliminate precisely US enemies. There are also a lot closer to home, to bring around packets to take spectacular photographs or video recordings, to bring a defibrillation device quickly in a patient with a heart problem. Chris Verhoeven, Associate professor Electronics Research Laboratory, from the Microelectronics department will participate in this discussion in the ?Kenniscaf?? in the Balie in Amsterdam.

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MEST Colloquium

Electronics in Nano-Era: Are we Facing a Reliability Wall?

Said Hamdioui

The talk will address technology scaling and its impact on different aspects of IC and electronics, and in particular the emerging reliability bottlenecks. First the basics of scaling will be covered, together with its impact on integration density, performance and power. The technology outlook will be analyzed in order to extract the challenges with respect to design, test and reliability both for near and long terms. IC realization process will be (re) defined while considering the technology trends and business pressure. Possible ways for the realization of future systems will be discussed.


MSc thesis presentation Thanos Ramkaj

Analysis and Design of High-Speed Successive Approximation Register ADCs

Thanos Ramkaj

HIGH performance Analog-to-DigitalConverters (ADCs) are highly demanded by modern instrumentation, data acquisition and wire-line/wireless communication systems. However, the need for high speed is always accompanied by high power consumption and large area since amplifiers with large bandwidth and analog devices with low noise and high linearity are mandatory to fulfill the stringent requirements of high speed operation. Benefits of technology scaling and the flexibility of digital circuits raise the design challenges towards high gain, low noise and high linearity amplifiers, increasing the difficulty of implementing various ADC architectures with traditional analog techniques. New applications that constantly demand better performance in terms of speed and accuracy, have created a need for energy-efficient ADCs in the GHz sampling frequency and low-to-moderate effective resolution range. The dominantly digital nature of Successive Approximation Register (SAR) ADCs makes them a good candidate for an energy-efficient and scalable design, overcoming the aforementioned challenges, but its sequential operation limits its applicability in the GHz sampling range. It is of great interest to systematically study and understand the trade-offs in realizing such multi-GS/s, low power ADCs.

This thesis work analyzes the trade-offs in realizing SAR ADCs in the GHz range in terms of speed, accuracy, power and area. First, basic ADC principles such as quantization and sampling are discussed and performance metrics are introduced. Then, the theory is summarized and the advantages and disadvantages of various types of ADC architectures for high speed operation are pointed out, while analysis and evaluation of system and circuit level techniques, in order to overcome the speed limitation of SAR ADCs, and extend their operation in the GHz sampling frequency with affordable power and area trade-offs follow. Based on the aforementioned analysis, a novel architecture is proposed to break the speed limit due to sequential operation, and realize an 8-bit single channel 2 GS/s SAR ADC. The proposed architecture combines optimally the multibit/ cycle approach with interleaving comparators. Furthermore, other techniques such as separating the sample and DAC functions, a segmentation switching capacitive DAC with sub-fF unit capacitors and a very lowpower reference generator contribute in speed enhancement and power reduction. The effectiveness and performance of the proposed architecture and techniques is verified through both behavioral modeling (MATLAB, Verilog-A) and transistor level circuit simulations. The sub-blocks composing the ADC such as comparators, DACs, T/H, reference buffers, preamplifiers, biasing blocks, clock drivers are designed in 40 nm digital LP CMOS process and simulation results both for individual blocks as well as for the whole ADC are presented. Simulation results indicate a sample rate of 2 GS/s with an SNDR of 41.8 dB at Nyquist input frequency (1 GHz) and above 35 dB until 10 GHz input frequency, while consuming a total power of 17.2mWat 1.2 V supply.


MSc ME Thesis Presentation Menno Vastenholt

A Sub-GHz UWB Correlation Receiver for Wireless Biomedical Communication

Menno Vastenholt


Receivers Topology Optimization of the Combined Active and WiFi-based Passive Radar Network

Presentation for the EuRAD?14 conference

Inna Ivashko

This paper focuses on the accuracy analysis of the combined active and WiFi-based passive radar network. The Cramer-Rao Lower Bound is used as an accuracy metric. It is shown that localization performance of the active radar network can be improved with exploitation of the signals from passive bistatic WiFi radars. This makes reasonable to use information from passive and active radars simultaneously in order to enhance system localization capability. Sparsity-based algorithm is applied to find optimum geometry of the WiFi receivers at the fixed positions of the WiFi access points and active radars.

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EI Colloquium

Analog-to-digital converters

Jesper Steensgaard
Linear Technology, Milpitas, CA

Analog-to-digital converters have traditionally been a weak link in mixed-mode signal chains. As such, logarithmic and programmable-gain amplifiers have been used to effectively increase their overall dynamic range. In recent years, however, ADC performance has dramatically improved, making it difficult to design amplifiers and references capable of matching their performance. This talk will discuss the challenges of designing a circuit capable of driving a 20-bit SAR ADC with better than 1-part-per-million accuracy.

Biography

Jesper Steensgaard, obtained his MSEE and then his PhD from the Technical University of Denmark in 1999. He has 20+ years of experience in the design of high-resolution data converters. His early work focused on delta-sigma data converters, including mismatch-shaping binary-weighted-element DACs and continuous-time delta-sigma ADCs. Recently, Jesper developed a family of high-resolution low-power SAR ADCs, including the LTC2378-20, which combine the best features of delta-sigma ADCs (precision, low noise) and SAR ADCs (speed, low power, ease of use).


DIMES colloquium

Probabilistic Design for Reliability in Electronics and Photonics: Role, Attributes, Challenges

Prof.dr. Ephraim Suhir
Portland State University, USA

The recently suggested probabilistic design for reliability (PDfR) concept is based on:?1) highly focused and highly cost-effective failure oriented accelerated testing (FOAT),??aimed at understanding the physics of the anticipated failures and at quantifying, on the probabilistic basis, the outcome of FOATs conducted for the most vulnerable element(s) of the product of interest and the most likely and meaningful combination of possible stressors (the principle of superposition does not work in reliability engineering), and? 2) simple and physically meaningful predictive modeling (PM), both analytical and computer-aided, aimed at bridging the gap between what one "sees" as a result of FOAT and what he/she will supposedly "get" in the field. FOAT and PM based sensitivity analysis (SA) algorithms are developed as by-products.

The PDfR concept is based on the recognition of the fact that nobody and nothing is perfect, and that the difference between a highly reliable and insufficiently reliable product is ?merely? in the level of its probability of failure. If this probability (evaluated for the anticipated loading conditions and the given time in operation) is not acceptable, then such a SA can be effectively employed to determine what could be possibly changed, in terms of materials, geometries, application restrictions, etc., to improve the situation.

The PDfR analysis enables one also to check if the product is not "over-engineered", i.e., is not superfluously robust: if it is, it might be too costly: although the operational reliability cannot be low, it does not have to be higher than necessary either, but has to be adequate for the given product and application. This means that when both reliability and cost-effectiveness are imperative, ability to quantify reliability is a must. In this seminar the major PDfR concepts will be illustrated by case studies and practical examples. Although some advanced and subtle PDfR predictive modeling techniques have been recently developed for quantifying and assuring reliability of electronic and photonic products, especially those intended for aerospace applications, the practical examples addressed employ more or less elementary analytical models.

Biography

Prof. Dr. E. Suhir is Fellow of ASME, IEEE, American Physical Society (APS), Institute of Physics (UK), Society of Optical Engineers (SPIE), International Microelectronics and Packaging Society (IMAPS), Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE), Foreign Full Member (Academician) of the NAE, Ukraine, and Fulbright Scholar in Information Technologies. He has authored above 300 publications (patents, books, book chapters, papers) and received numerous professional awards, including 2004 ASME Worcester Read Warner Medal for outstanding contributions to the permanent literature of engineering and laying a foundation of a new discipline ?Structural Analysis in Electronics and Photonics Systems?. Dr. Suhir is the third Russian American, after Steven Timoshenko and Igor Sikorsky, who received this prestigious award. Dr. Suhir is co-founder of the ASME Journal of Electronic Packaging and served as its Technical Editor for eight years (1994-2002).

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MEST welcome drink

Meet and greet your friends and colleagues with a FREE Drink to say Hallo !!!

Organized by MEST student association

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Long-range 3D Range Detector Based on Time-correlated Single-photon Counting

Dali Zhang

Three-dimensional (3D) range detectors enabling 3D computer vision is now popular in automotive industry. With their participation, automobile safety has been further enhanced, autonomous driving has become realizable. Time-correlated single-photon counting (TCSPC) technique utilizing complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) single photon detectors (SPDs) and time-to-digital converters (TDCs) embodies the proper participant of automotive 3D vision, with low power consumption, low cost, high speed, high robustness, small size, and portability.

In this thesis, a TCSPC 3D range detector for automotive application was studied and modeled. The model covered all main components of a TCSPC system, including the TCSPC range detection process, the signal, and the noise. It was designed to predict the behavior of TCSPC systems and help future designers optimize the performance in accordance with the targeted application.

To verify the model, a experimental setup was designed, implemented, and characterized. The setup consists of a data acquisition system, data processing procedures, and an optical-mechanical system. Measurements performed using the setup have confirmed that the model was designed correctly. For further exploration, range detection from 0.2 m to 60 m were carried out.


Bioelectronics-ELCA daytrip

Bioelectronics-ELCA daytrip


By bus to Haarlem, guided tour through the city, visiting Teylers Museum incl. lunch, boat tour on the Spaarne, by bus to Zandvoort for the BBQ.

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Development of a Multichannel TCSPC System in a Spartan 6 FPGA

Harald Homulle

For the master project work was carried out for the development of a fluorescence lifetime imaging probe for fluorescence guided surgery. For this project a prototype was designed. The work on the prototype was divided into three main parts, hardware, firmware / software, and system / optics. In this thesis the firmware / software of the system are described. An overview of the system is given and the performance is evaluated.

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ISCAS 2014

2014 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems

Welcome from the General Chairs of the Organising Committee

On behalf of the Organising Committee we welcome you to Melbourne, ranked by the Economist Intelligence Unit in 2011, 2012 and 2013 as the most liveable City in the world, to Australia, and to the 2014 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems.

ISCAS?2014 is sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers Circuits and Systems Society (IEEE CASS), and generously supported by the State Government of Victoria and the Melbourne Convention Bureau.

As you all know, ISCAS is the flagship annual conference of IEEE CASS, and it is well established as the world?s premier networking forum in the fields of theory, design and implementation of circuits and systems. As a result of the release of its 2012 Vision and Mission (see ieee-cas.org), the CASS goal is to develop ISCAS also as the leading forum for pioneering circuits and systems contributions to humanity?s grand challenges.

Accordingly, the special theme of ISCAS 2014 is nano/bio circuits and systems applied to enhancing living and lifestyles, particularly in relation to the multidisciplinary grand challenges in healthcare and wellbeing, the environment and climate change.

Keynotes

ISCAS?2014 has four keynote presentations, two of which address crucial aspects of high priority grand challenges, in health and in sustainability, while the other two describe frontier work at the extreme ends, in terms of scale, of circuits and systems engineering ? new devices that promise to sustain the remarkable advances in semiconductors that we have enjoyed for over 60 years, and design methods for systems of systems, which are relevant to so many grand challenge problems:

Dr Donald E. Ingber from Harvard University on Monday will present Microengineered Human Organs On Chips, describing advances he and his team have made in the engineering of microfluidic ?Organs-on-Chips??microchips lined by living human cells created with microfabrication techniques that recapitulate organ-level structure and functions as a way to replace animal testing for drug development and mechanistic discovery.

Professor Iven Mareels from The University of Melbourne in his talk on Wednesday, titled Circuits and Systems for Modern Irrigation Management, describes work over 15 years on circuits and systems research, development and commercialisation of an internet-of-things dedicated to smart irrigation water management.

Professor Victor Zhirnov from the Semiconductor Research Corporation, in Scaling Limits of Nanoionic Devices, elaborates how recognition that crystal ?defects? could be used as controllable entities, rather than being seen as imperfections, leads to the possibility that nanoionic resistive switching devices may be scalable down to ~ 1nm and thus may offer a promising path to replace the foundation of today?s computing technologies.

Dr. Stephan C. Stilkerich from Airbus Group will present Model Based Engineering of Highly Mobile Systems of Systems: Safe Aeroplanes; Safer Automobiles, with an introduction and post-talk discussion moderated by Dr Graham Hellestrand from Embedded Systems Technology. This keynote deals with front-line approaches to engineering electronic systems and their software, that are required to perform real-time control critical for the safe operation of airplanes and cars, including while operating in dense traffic and simultaneously reducing environmental impact.

Technical Program Regular Sessions

The technical program consists of tutorials, lecture papers, poster papers and demonstrations accepted based on peer review of the submission from regular open calls. We have retained many of the ISCAS features that have evolved in recent years, and added new features, some in response to ISCAS feedback, to continue to improve attendees? experience of the event.

We are very pleased to report that ISCAS?2014 will be first time that the new CASS Conference App will be made available to all attendees, and we look forward to your feedback to improve it. The CAS Society has supported the development of the Conference App, through Conference4Me, to facilitate the navigation of the conference agenda and venues, secure access to proceedings, micro-blogging, live discussion and ranking of papers, providing feedback to organizers and general improvement of attendees? experience at CAS conferences.

Lecture papers follow the traditional ISCAS format. There are nine lecture sessions over three days, with session having 11 parallel streams. Sessions are 90 minutes with up to five papers, allowing 18 minute for each including introduction, presentation and discussion.

The Demonstration session and Poster sessions are held over 3 hours commencing at the 3pm coffee break on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. The Demonstration session is Monday only. There are no competing parallel lecture sessions during the first 90 minutes of each day?s Posters/Demonstrations, allowing increased attention to them from all attendees.

We have increased the length of the lunch break to 90 minutes. This will allow more time for the CASS side meetings, particularly the annual meetings of the 15 CASS Technical Committees, which are playing an increasingly important role in leadership of the Society. The longer break will also provide a more relaxed walk to the nearby restaurants for the lunch break, and we hope it will facilitate a greater level of networking.

Following the ISCAS?2013 lead we continue the trial of offering free attendance at Tutorial and CAS-FEST sessions for all ISCAS?2014 registrants. We have also expanded both the tutorial program and CAS-FEST. CASS? goals in these moves are both to widen the reach of and to increase participation in the tutorial program and CAS-FEST. We will greatly appreciate feedback from attendees on the value you perceive in these offerings.

Tutorials

ISCAS?2014 commences on Sunday with 19 half-day and 1 full-day Tutorial sessions.

We have included two Tutorial sessions on Technology Management in response to feedback from CASS industry members:

T19 ? Interfacing Organisations: How to successfully manage organizational interfaces by Felix Lustenberger; and T20 - Managing Technology Professionals by Tuna B. Tarim: Transitioning from Individual Contributor to Management. Felix and Tuna are CASS members and also leaders of IEEE?s Technology Management Council, which was recently approved to transition to an IEEE Society.

Also in response to feedback, from the Women in CAS (WiCAS) and Young Professionals Program (formerly GoLD) groups, is a tutorial on career development, social skills, collaboration and networking:

T7 ? Engineering Networks that Work: Design Tools for Your Career by Dr Margaret Collins Margaret is a Cardiff-based research consultant, professional coach and trainer with extensive experience in helping people achieve their career goals. Come ready to get involved ? this is an active workshop session!

A third initiative in the Tutorials is a full day introduction to Memristive devices, circuits, systems and applications, the topic of this year?s CAS-FEST. This will cover all aspects of this emerging technology, namely: theory, practical nanodevices, physical switching mechanisms, circuits and emerging applications:

T21 ? If it?s Pinched it?s a memristor (AM), Professor Leon Chua T22 ? ReRAM Memristive Devices: Electrochemical Systems at the Atomic Scale (AM), Dr Ilia Valov T23 ? Analog and Mixed-Signal Applications of Memristive Devices (PM), Professor Dmitri Strukov T24 Integrating memristive devices in CMOS neuromorphic computing architectures (PM), Professor Giacomo Indiveri The aim of these sessions is to provide sufficient introduction to enable a typical ISCAS attendee to appreciate the state of the art material that will be presented in the CAS-FEST sessions.

CAS-FEST

Since its inception in 2010, the Circuits and Systems ? Forum on Emerging and Selected Topics has progressively become more closely integrated with ISCAS. This year?s topic was again selected from an open call and the winning proposal, from members of the Nonlinear Circuits and Systems (NCAS) Technical Committee, has taken still further this level of integration with ISCAS. This includes the presentation of invited introductory tutorials in the regular ISCAS Tutorials program (see above), the inclusion of three Special Sessions in the regular ISCAS Lecture Papers program, a full day of CAS-FEST Special Sessions on Wednesday, and the highlight full day of CAS-FEST Keynote talks on Thursday.

With this additional integration, CAS-FEST 2014 will bring together leading experts and provide a thorough coverage of the field of memristors, from an introduction to those unfamiliar with the field, through solidifying existing knowledge, to highlighting developments at the forefront of the field, and pointing to future challenges and promising directions for research. We hope that this coordinated approach will result in a landmark event in the development of the field.

Social Events and Awards Dinner

We are planning the now standard set of ISCAS evening events, with the Welcome Reception on Sunday evening soon after the conclusion of Tutorials, the WiCAS/YPP (formerly GoLD) event on early Monday evening, the Awards Dinner on Tuesday evening, and the Closing Reception immediately following the last session on Wednesday. Watch out for the Australian twists!

We hope that you will have a rewarding and enjoyable time in Melbourne at ISCAS?2014 and look forward to meeting as many of you as we can!

Professor Jugdutt (Jack) Singh & Dr David Skellern General Co-Chairs, ISCAS 2014

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Physical design of a 3D router

Milovan Vasic

With the use of multi-core architectures, the Network-on-Chip (NoC) became an important research topic. The most important benefit of a NoC compared to a communication bus is that it is scalable. The heart of the NoC is the router, which provides the communication between different computational units. This component is highly suitable to be a 3D component, which means that the connection can go into a vertical direction. This way the NoC is extended, with the same area footprint. This thesis describes the physical design of the 3D router, where various design problems are solved. An existing router architecture is used as a start-point. One of the problems which this thesis is trying to solve, is the reduction of the number of needed data lines. This is especially useful for the vertical data lines, which are implemented with Through Silicon Vias (TSVs). A TSV has a large footprint compared to a transistor, which means it takes up a lot of chip area. This results in increased cost. The reduction of the data lines is accomplished by the serialization of the data. It is determined that the best serialization ratio is 4. The 3D router is also adjusted for asynchronous operation. This is accomplished with the use of FIFOs, two-flop synchronizers and Gray Encoders.


Lecture on wearable and implantable medical devices

Lecture on wearable and implantable medical devices

Wouter Serdijn

Wouter Serdijn will present a lecture on wearable and implantable medical device electronics

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Signal Processing Seminar

OFDM Analysis: an Industry Point of View

Earl McCune

With more than 40 years of experience in wireless communications technology and its associated hardware construction, this presenter finds the current flurry of interest in orthogonal frequency division modulation (OFDM) very interesting. It is surprising that the extremely revolutionary nature of this signal class is actually poorly understood, particularly by the academic community. On the industrial side, there is a general misunderstanding of the economic consequences of building hardware needed to generate and receive an OFDM signal. Here the motivation and physical principles of OFDM are built from fundamental concepts, from which the signal characteristics are evaluated and compared with conventional QAM. Conclusions on the comparative economics of OFDM are drawn.


EUCAP14 conference on antennas and propagation

Abstract submission: 13 Oct 2013

Conference dates: 6-8 April 2014

Application areas:

  • Fundamental research
  • Satcom on-the-move terminal antennas
  • Navigation, localisation, positioning and tracking
  • Cellular mobile communications (includes: base station, handheld devices)
  • Machine to machine, internet on devices
  • Wireless networks (includes: WLAN, indoor communication)
  • High data-rate transfer and backbone networks
  • RFID and sensor networks
  • Biomedical (includes: human body interaction, on-body antennas, electromagnetic exposure and interactions)
  • Satellite communications
  • Satellite passive and active remote sensing
  • RADAR
  • Radio astronomy
  • Signal and image processing
  • Defense and security
  • Short-range Giga-bit communications
  • Commercial software

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