You are invited to attend a lecture

By

Tom Heller

M.Sc. student of Professor Eran Socher

Co-adviser: Professor Emanuel Cohen, Technion

Electrical Engineering, Physical Electronics Department

Tel Aviv University

An F-Band IQ Receiver Front-end in 28 nm CMOS

Abstract

This talk will discuss the design of a millimeter-wave F-band zero-IF receiver front-end for wireless chip-to-chip communication in 28-nm CMOS. The talk will focus on the design of the LNA chain and the quadrature splitter, but will also discuss the passive ring mixer and zero-IF buffers.

The LNA consists of a chain of four capacitively neutralized differential pairs. Dissipative losses, a major cause of noise figure degradation, are minimized by choosing appropriate LNA device dimensions and neutralization capacitors. The effect of capacitive neutralization on the minimum noise figure and noise sensitivity of a differential pair will also be discussed.

The quadrature splitter, which provides the I and Q carrier signals, can be tuned over a wide LO bandwidth. The splitter is implemented as a transformer-based directional coupler with an isolation port terminated by a tunable load impedance.

The receiver front-end consumes 18 mW from a 1 V supply and is driven by a -4 dBm F-band LO signal power. The zero-IF chain, used for testing purposes, consumes 33 mW from a 1.5 V supply.

Wednesday, 30 December 2015, at 9:30

Room 206, Wolfson Mechanical Engineering Building

You are invited to attend a lecture

By

Samuel Jameson

Ph.D. student of Prof. Eran Socher

Electrical Engineering, Physical Electronics Department

Tel Aviv University

Millimeter-Wave and THz CMOS Radiating Transmitters

Abstract

CMOS was originally not considered suitable for RF-circuits however, the CMOS technology kept improving its operation frequency, enabling nowadays to reach THz frequencies with sufficient power that will allow us to create low-cost THz scanners. If efficient transmitters and receivers can be made efficient enough with high gain and compact antennas, THz scanner of the size of a hand or even less could be realized one day at low cost. Such devices could be then plugged to any smart-phone allowing extremely quick and regular scan of our body detecting and identifying diseases at the earliest stage for quicker prevention and treatment. On the road to the THz and its applications, systems based on millimeter-wave frequencies (24-300 GHz) are developed but mainly in targeting automotive systems (76.5 GHz) and in image screening for weapon detection (94 GHz). CMOS will be the key for mass-production for its low-cost and large scale integration properties that would allow integrating a whole system on-chip. In this research, we will focus on the development and improvement of CMOS MMW and THz transmitters and on their connection from the micro-scale environment to the human scale environment while conserving their state-of-the-art characteristics.

Thursday, December 28, 2015, at 16:00

Room 001, Kitot building

You are invited to attend a lecture

By

Assaf Azoulay

M.Sc. student of Dr. Eran Socher

Electrical Engineering, Physical Electronics Department

Tel Aviv University

Devices for Multiband Communication in MM-Waves

Abstract

Since the introduction of the iPhone, the demand for high data rate has increased drastically. More and more applications require wide bandwidth to allow for many bytes of digital transmission in a short period. Moreover, the demand for multifunction devices is inevitable whereas in today's phone, one can find many - LTE, GPS, Bluetooth and many more. In parallel to these increasing demands, mmW applications have been developed - Satcom, Wigig, automotive Rardar and others. Much of the RF research is focused on improving the performance of  existing bands on one hand and exploring new bands, such as 100-300GHz on the other hand.

This thesis presents the design of key components that enable the use of multiple applications and high data rates on the same chip. We start by introducing a tri-band VCO which oscillates at 3 different bands 30, 60 and 90 GHz. This device can also be used as an FSK by modulating the control voltage. The following device is the wideband antenna. The antenna design should enable the wideband demand in terms of good Return Loss and radiation pattern stability. The difficulties encountered with integrating the antenna with the RF chip by using interconnecting bonding wires is addressed and a matching circuit solution is shown. The last device this thesis explores is a combiner that will combine all bands into a single radiating element while maintaining low loss and compact size.

The VCO was designed on a 65nm CMOS technology from TSMC. The simulation results showed reasonable power across the band, ranging from -4dBm at 30GHz to -13dBm at 60GHz and -30dBm at 90GHz. The power was simulated into a single ended, 50 ohm load. The designed antenna was realized on a Rogers 5880 Duroid laminate, and we measured a peak gain of +6dBi at 120GHz at end-fire direction. The results were in good agreement with the EM simulations performed on CST.

The combiner was designed as a Triplexer on CMOS chip with the same technology as the VCO and was simulated to have average loss of 3dB across each sub-band.

Sunday, 27 November 2015, at 14:00

Room 101, Wolfson Building of Computer and Software Engineering

Doron Bar-Lev

(PhD student under the supervision of Prof. Jacob Scheuer)

School of Electrical Engineering, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv 69978, Israel

Plasmonic Metasurfaces Applications for Manipulation of Optical Radiation

Surface plasmons modes are characterized by a propagating or a localized behavior, leading to a variety of unique phenomena, particularly enhanced near field intensities at sub-wavelength dimensions. The intense and localized field can be harnessed to increase the sensitivity and performance of numerous phenomena and applications. Moreover, introduction of carefully designed sub-wavelength patterns to the surface, form a plasmonic metasurface that can shape the amplitude, phase and polarization of the electromagnetic (EM) field in the vicinity of the structure, thus offering a new paradigm for manipulation and control of optical radiation.

In this talk the unique nature of plasmonic waves and metausrfaces will be discussed leading to two new applications: 1) extremely efficient laser-driven particle accelerators and 2) generation and dynamic control of arbitrary plasmonic wave-fronts using simple and static plasmonic surfaces. The first application demonstrates the opportunity of using a plasmonic metasurface to tailor the EM field in its vicinity, particularly for particle beam manipulation. I will present general design rules for plasmonic metasurface laser-driven accelerators (MLAs) and a specific structure for efficient acceleration of relativistic particles. The presented MLA attains a huge acceleration gradient of 11.6GV/m at 16fsec operation. This value is almost four times larger than that of contemporary short pulse laser accelerators and two orders of magnitude larger than that of contemporary radio-frequency based accelerators. The second application will refer to the reciprocal process in which manipulations on the surrounding EM field affects the generated plasmonic waves. Here, I will show that by tailoring the exciting beam incident on a simple and static one-dimensional metallic grating, efficient generation and dynamic control of practically every possible arbitrary plasmonic wave-front is achievable. A complete and rigorous theory will be presented and demonstrated, leading to a general design formalism for generating arbitrary plasmonic wave fronts. Finally, using this formalism I will demonstrate excitation of optically controlled surface plasmon hotspots that can lead to exciting new applications as dark field plasmonic microscopy and surface optical tweezers.

Thursday, December 24, 2015, at 10:00

Room 011, Kitot building