Integrated Circuits and Systems Group

Topic: Bio-inspired Polarization Imagers – Making the invisible visible

Location and date: POB (ACES) 2.402, Oct. 21, 6pm

Biology provides us with fascinating examples of intelligent, low power, and highly efficient sensory systems. With the advances in CMOS technology, it has become feasible to build microelectronic systems that mimic some of the key features found in biology. This talk will focus on CMOS vision sensors for polarization imaging. We will review briefly the concepts of polarization and how it is used by various species in nature to enhance their vision or to aid with navigation and communication. Inspired by the biology we have explored polarization for a variety of applications to detect features that are hard to see or even invisible to the human eye. More recent results from the literature including the use of polarization imaging for disease detection will be reviewed. Motivated by the potential advantages of polarization imaging, we have developed a CMOS imager that combines the pixel array with micropolarizers and on-chip processing. Details of the design and polarizer optimization will be described.

Biography: Jan Van der Spiegel is a Professor of the Electrical and Systems Engineering Department, the Associate Dean for Education and the Director of the Center for Sensor Technologies at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Van der Spiegel received his Masters degree in Electro-Mechanical Engineering and his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Leuven, Belgium. His primary research interests are in mixed-mode VLSI design, CMOS vision sensors for polarization imaging, biologically based image sensors and brain-machine interfaces. He is the author of over 160 journal and conference papers and holds 4 patents. He is a fellow of the IEEE, the recipient of the IEEE Major Educational Innovation Award, the IEEE Third Millennium Medal, the UPS Foundation Distinguished Education Chair and the Bicentennial Class of 1940 Term Chair. He has served on several IEEE program committees and was the technical program chair of the 2007 International Solid-State Circuit Conference (ISSCC 2007). He is a member of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society AdCom, has been the SSCS chapters Chairs coordinator, associate editor of the Transaction of BioCAS, and is the former Editor of Sensors and Actuators A for North and South America. He is currently the president elect of the IEEE SSCS.

Location and date: POB (ACES) 2.402, Oct. 20th, 12pm

Topic: Energy Efficient SAR-Type ADC Design – Trends and Techniques

The evolving broadband wireless communication increasingly drives fast development on high-performance consumer portable smart and green gadgets with longer battery life, which leads to growing demands on high-speed ADCs with higher energy efficiency. SAR-type ADCs which take advantages of CMOS technology downscaling for their “highly digital” implementation have been dominating large segments of high-speed and energy efficient ADCs with efficiencies down to fJ/conversion step at 100MHz+ sampling rate. This talk provides firstly an overview of the state-of-the-art SAR-Type high energy-efficient ADCs, and then present the trends of the ADCs through the energy, speed and noise Analysis for various architectures including SAR & Binary-Search, Multi-bit SAR, Flash SAR and Pipeline SAR, Time-interleaved and etc. Practical design examples and techniques will be also addressed.

Biography: Seng-Pan U (Ben) received joint Ph.D. degree from the University of Macau (UM) and the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Portugal in 2002. He is currently Professor and Deputy Director of State-Key Lab. of Analog & Mixed-Signal VLSI of UM. He is the co-founder of Chipidea Microelectronics (Macau), Ltd. (currently Synopsys Macau Ltd) for analog & mixed-signal IP development and is also Senior Analog Design Manager and Site General Manager. He published 130+ papers and 4 books in Springer and China Science Press in the area of VHF SC filters, Analog Baseband for Multi-standard wireless transceivers and Very High-Speed TI ADCs, and he co-holds 10+ US patents. As the founding chair, he received the 2012 IEEE SSCS Outstanding Chapter Award. He received both the 2012 Macau Science & Technology (S&T) Invention and Progress Award. Both at the 1st time from Macau, he received the S&T Innovation Award of Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation in 2010, and also The State S&T Progress Award in 2011. In recognition of his contribution in high-technology research & industrial development in Macau, he was awarded by Macau SAR government the Honorary Title of Value in 2010. He was also awarded as the “Scientific Chinese of the Year 2012”. He is also advisor for 20+ student award recipients, incl. ISSCC Silk-Road Award & A-SSCC Student Design Contest for data converter papers. He is currently IEEE SSCS Distinguished Lecturer (2014-2015), TPC of ISSCC, A-SSCC, VLSI-DAT, RFIT and Editorial Board member of Springer journal AICSP.

Time: May 30 (Friday), 6:15pm
Location: POB 2.402

Speaker: Howard C. Luong, Ph.D of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Topic: A Fully-Integrated CMOS Frequency Synthesizer for Software-Defined Radios

This talk presents the design and the measurements of a fully integrated frequency synthesizer for software-defined radios (SDRs), which meets both the frequency and the phase noise requirement for all the wireless standards from 47MHz to 10GHz, including the 14-band UWB, and the 802.15.3c standard from 57GHz to 66GHz. Implemented in a 0.13-m CMOS process, the synthesizer prototype occupies an active area of 3mm2, consumes a total power of 33mW to 83mW, and achieves a measured phase noise of -139.6dBc/Hz at 3MHz offset from a 1.7GHz carrier.

Biography: Howard Luong received his BS, MS, and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) from University of California at Berkeley in 1988, 1990, and 1994, respectively. Since September 1994, he has joined the EEE faculty at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology where he is currently a professor. Professor Luong’s research interests are in analog, RF, and mm-Wave integrated circuits and systems for wireless and portable applications. He was a co-author of the two books entitled “Low-Voltage RF CMOS Frequency Synthesizers” published by Cambridge University Press in 2004 and “Design of Low-Voltage CMOS Switched-Opamp Switched-Capacitor Systems” published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2003. Professor Luong is an IEEE Fellow. He is currently serving as an IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society Distinguished Lecturer, an Associate Editor for IEEE Virtual Journal on RFIC, and a technical program committee member of many conferences, including Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC), European Solid-State Circuits Conference (ESSCIRC), and Asian Solid-State Circuits Conference (A-SSCC).