Integrated Circuits and Systems Group

Location: ENS 314

Date and time: 2pm, Tuesday, Feb. 26th

Talk Title:

Magnetic Resonance of Porous Media

Abstract:

NMR has become an important technique for characterization of porous materials in recent years. In particular, its importance in petroleum exploration has been increased by the recent progress in NMR well-logging. The continuous rise of global demand for energy and the difficulty of significantly increasing production capacity demands better evaluation of oil reservoirs. This talk will outline the challenges in our ability to understand rock structures and fluid composition in oil and gas reservoirs, and the MR technical development and their applications. These new applications demands a new type of NMR system that is capable of broadband RF transmission and reception  I will also discuss a new concept of NMR system with a fully broadband front-end electronics. This change to the MR front-end electronics enables a fully digital MR system with unparalleled flexibility and simplicity for multi-frequency MR, a transition analogous to the one from classic analog radios to modern digital receivers found in mobile electronics.

Speaker Bio:

Dr. Yiqiao Song is currently a Scientific Advisor at Schlumberger-Doll Research. He earned his BS from Peking University and Ph.D. from Northwestern University. He worked in UC Berkeley as a Miller Research Fellow before joining Schlumberger in 1997. His focus has been developing NMR/MRI/NQR methodologies and instrumentation for well-logging,  understanding materials including porous media (rocks, cements and composites), complex fluids (crude oils, emulsion, mixtures) and biological materials. He is also affiliated part-time at Massachusetts General Hospital to study complex tissue structures. He was elected Fellow of American Physical Society in 2009 and to the Editorial board of Journal of Magnetic Resonance. Dr. Song has published over 100 papers in scientific journals and awarded over 20 patents.

Location: ENS 314

Date and time: 5pm, Friday, March 1st

Topic: Continuous-time Delta Sigma Modulators with Improved Linearity and Reduced Clock Jitter Sensitivity

Conventional continuous-time modulators that use non-return-to-zero (NRZ) feedback DACs suffer from distortion due to inter-symbol-interference (ISI) and are sensitive to clock jitter. Using a return-to-zero (RZ) DAC solves the problem of ISI, but exacerbates clock jitter sensitivity. The clock jitter sensitivity of an NRZ DAC can be reduced using a switched-capacitor (SC) DAC, but the large peak-to-average ratio of the DAC waveform degrades modulator linearity. In this work, we introduce the Switched-Capacitor Return-to-Zero (SCRZ) DAC, which combines the low clock jitter sensitivity of the SC DAC with the low distortion of an RZ DAC. Measured results from a test chip fabricated in 0.18um CMOS demonstrate the efficacy of the SCRZ technique.

Biography:

Shanthi Pavan obtained the B.Tech degree in Electronics and Communication Engg from the  Indian Institute of Technology, Madras in 1995 and the M.S and Sc.D  degrees from Columbia University, New York in 1997 and 1999 respectively. After working in industry  for a few years, he moved to  the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, where he is now a  Professor of Electrical Engineering. His research interests are in the areas of high speed analog circuit  design, sensing and signal processing.  Dr.Pavan is the recipient of several awards, including the IEEE  Circuits and Systems Society Darlington Best Paper Award (2009). He is the Deputy Editor in Chief of the  IEEE Transactions on Circuits and  Systems: Part I – Regular Papers and serves on the Data Converter  Committee of the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC).

Date: Feb. 21th, 11am
Location: ACE 6.336

Title:
Crosslayer Soft Error Analysis: From Circuit Layout to Application Software

Abstract:
Radiation-induced Soft errors are major reliability concerns in systems manufactured at nanoscale technology nodes. This is mostly due to increased number of devices per system, as a side effect of Moore¹s law, and increased chance of multiple upsets, resulting in multiple errors, because of smaller geometries. Between the particle strike on the silicon substrate and its
effect as a system failure, there are various levels of error propagation and masking. These factors need to be quantified in details to accurately account for system reliability and also identify the most vulnerable components in the overall hardware-software design stack for cost-effective reliability improvement. In this talk I will discuss a cross-layer approach for soft
error modeling and propagation by considering various factors from circuit layout all the way to the software application.

Bio:
Mehdi Tahoori, is professor and Chair of Dependable Nano-Computing (CDNC) at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany since 2009. Before that he was an associate professor of ECE at Northeastern University, Boston, USA. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 2003 and 2002, respectively. He has been on the organizing and technical program committee of various design automation, test, and dependability conferences such as DATE, ICCAD, ITC, ETS, GLSVLSI, DSN, and IOLTS. He has organized various workshops, panels, tutorials and special session in major design and test conferences, such as DATE, ICCAD, and VTS. He is an associate editor of ACM Journal of Emerging Technologies for Computing. He was the recipient of NSF CAREER Award.