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Calit2 and Jacobs School Researchers Finish Banner 'Microwave Week'

San Diego, June 13, 2009 -- Engineers from Calit2 and UCSD's Jacobs School of Engineering were in Boston this week, presenting a bumper crop of 19 papers at the co-located Radio Frequency Integrated Chips conference (RFIC 2009) and International Microwave Symposium (IMS 2009) during Microwave Week 2009. The showing was particularly impressive because of the intense competition among researchers seeking to present their research: the overall acceptance rate of papers at RFIC was around 45 percent, and for IMS less than 48 percent.

IMS_RFIC


A total of 19 UC San Diego papers were accepted to RFIC and IMS, the second highest total after Purdue (although UCSD was #1 at RFIC alone). They included:

RFIC 2009

A SAW-Less CDMA Receiver Front-End with Single-Ended LNA and Single-Balanced Mixer with 25% Duty-Cycle LO in 65nm CMOS
H. Khatri1, L. Liu2, T. Chang2; P. S. Gudem, and L. E. Larson1, 1UCSD, 2Qualcomm Inc.

A DC-102GHz Broadband Amplifier in 0.12 μm SiGe BiCMOS
J. Kim and J. F. Buckwalter, UCSD

Low-Loss 0.13μm CMOS 50-70GHz SPDT and SP4T Switches
Y. A. Atesal, B. Cetinoneri, G. M. Rebeiz, UCSD

A Two-Channel Ku-Band BiCMOS Digital Beam-Forming Receiver for Polarization-Agile Phased-Array Applications
B. Cetinoneri, Y. A. Atesal, G. M. Rebeiz, UCSD

A 25 dBm High-Efficiency Digitally-Modulated SOI CMOS Power Amplifier for Multi-Standard RF Polar Transmitters
S. Pornpromlikit1, J. Jeong2, C. D. Presti1, A. Scuder3, and P. M. Asbeck1, 1UCSD, 2Kwangwoon Univ, 3STMicroelectronics s.r.l.

Fully Integrated Dual-Band Power Amplifiers with On-Chip Baluns in 65nm CMOS for an 802.11n MIMO WLAN SoC
A. Afsahi1,2 A Behzad2, V. Magoon2, L. E. Larson1, 1UCSD, 2Broadcom Corp.

Background Estimation of Power Amplifier Nonlinearities for OFDM Signals
P. V. Kolinko, L. E. Larson, UCSD

High-Performance W-Band SiGe RFICs for Passive Millimeter-Wave Imaging
J. W. May, G. M. Rebeiz, UCSD

A 4-Channel 24-27GHz CMOS Differential Phased-Array Receiver
T. Yu, G. M. Rebeiz, UCSD

A Dual-Band CMOS CDMA Transmitter without SAW and Driver Amplifier
M. Farazian 1 , B. Asuri 2, Y. Zhao 2, L. E. Larson 1 1UCSD, 2Qualcomm Inc.

Injection Locked Oscillator Arrays for Spectrμm Analysis
T.D. Gathman, J.F. Buckwalter, UCSD

IMS 2009

A 33dBm 1.9GHz Siliconon-Insulator CMOS Stacked-FET Power Amplifier
S. Pornpromlikit1 , J. Jeong2, C. D. Presti1, A. Scuderi3, P. M. Asbeck1, 1UCSD, 2Kwangwoon Univ., Seoul, Republic of Korea, 3STMicroelectronics s.r.l., Catania, Italy

A 36-38GHz, 4-Element, Transmit/Receive, Phased-Array with 5-bit Amplitude and Phase Control
J. Kim1, D. Kang2, B. Min3, G. M. Rebeiz2, 1Kwangwoon Univ., Seoul, Republic of Korea, 2UCSD, 3Qualcomm, Inc., Santa Clara

A Miniature DC-70GHz SP4T Switch in 0.13μm CMOS
B. Cetinoneri, Y. A. Atesal, G. M. Rebeiz, UCSD

High-Q RF MEMS Tunable Evanescent-Mode Cavity Filter
S. Park1, I. Reines2, G. Rebeiz2, 1Qualcomm Inc., 2UCSD

Cascadable RF MEMS Switched Capacitors for 0.1-2GHz Applications
I. C. Reines, G. M. Rebeiz, UCSD

A Compact SPDT RF MEMS Switch with High Contact Force
H. Sedaghat-Pisheh, G. M. Rebeiz, UCSD

Simulation of Intermodulation Distortion in Passive CMOS FET Mixers
H. Khatri1, P. S. Gudem2, L. E. Larson1, 1UCSD, 2Qualcomm Inc.

Wideband Envelope Tracking Power Amplifier with Reduced Bandwidth Power Supply Waveform
J. Jeong1, D. F. Kimball2, M. Kwak1, C. Hsia1, P. Draxler3, P. M. Asbeck1, 1UCSD, 2Calit2, 3Qualcomm Inc.
At IMS 2009, a graduate student in the lab of Electrical and Computer Engineering professor Peter Asbeck took home the prize for the second-best paper of the symposium. Ph.D. candidate Sataporn Pornpromlikit -- whose nickname is Aui, pronounced way -- was the first author on the paper, titled "A 33dBm 1.9GHz Silicon-on-Insulator CMOS Stacked-FET Power Amplifier." The Thai researcher spends most of his time in Calit2 and tested his RFIC in the Calit2 power amplifier testbed. His co-authors included UCSD postdoc Calogero Presti, Antonino Scuderi of STmicroelectronics, recent UCSD Ph.D. JinHo Jeong who is now on the faculty at Korea's Kwangwoon University, and Asbeck. Notes Calit2's Don Kimball: "It was a come-from-behind victory based on a paper that was previously rejected. The odds were stacked against them as it was a stacked MOSFET design fraught with risk."

The two-day RFIC 2009, UC San Diego researchers presented 11 papers -- more than any other university or corporation, and out of a total of 140 papers -- and one of those papers (see below) was judged to be one of the three top papers of the conference. Four papers each came from the labs of Larry Larson and Gabriel Rebeiz, one from Peter Asbeck's group, and two from the lab of James Buckwalter, all professors from the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) department of the Jacobs School.

“Our success at this conference is a direct result of the investment that UC San Diego has made over many decades in the field of wireless communications," said Larson, chair of the ECE department and an active academic participant in Calit2. "The RFIC field requires an interdisciplinary team, because it requires innovation in the areas of electronic devices, integrated circuit theory, electromagnetic theory and communications systems. The broad skills of the UCSD faculty have made this extraordinary level of research innovation possible.”  

In addition to the award-winning paper at the International Microwave Symposium mentioned above, an additional seven UC San Diego papers were presented at IMS 2009, including five co-authored by Rebeiz and his graduate students. Calit2 principal development engineer Don Kimball co-authored a paper with Peter Asbeck and members of his lab. At IMS, UC San Diego ranked second after Purdue in terms of the most papers presented.

On June 12, the last day of IMS 2009, Rebeiz co-organized a workshop on "Emerging Applications of RF-MEMS" (radio frequency-microelectro-mechanical systems), at which he delivered a talk on "Development of High-Q Evanescent Mode Tunable Filters and Planar Ceramic Tunable Filters for 1.5-6.0GHz Applications".

At workshops in connection with RFIC 2009, ECE professor Larry Larson delivered two invited talks: "Power Amplifier Integration Challenges for Highly Integrated Multi-Mode Transceivers" at a workshop on challenges for future RF integration; and "Digitally Enhanced RF Circuits" at a half-day workhop on digitally assisted analog and RF circuits. In addition, Qualcomm engineer and UCSD Ph.D. candidate Paul Draxler presented on "Techniques for Envelope Tracking Linearization" during a workshop on power amplifier linearization.

Of the technical papers presented throughout the week, Qualcomm had co-authors on six of the UCSD papers, while Broadcom and STMicroelectronics had two each (see details in box).

The highlight of RFIC 2009 for UC San Diego was the #3 best-paper award to the team that invented radio frequency integrated circuits (RFICs). Click here to read more about the high-performance W-Band silicon-germanium (SiGe) radio frequency integrated circuits for passive millimeter-wave imaging  on the Jacobs School of Engineering website. 

Related Links

RFIC 2009
IMS 2009

Media Contacts

Daniel Kane, Jacobs School of Engineering, 858-534-3262, dbkane@ucsd.edu or Doug Ramsey, Calit2, 858-822-5825, dramsey@ucsd.edu.