Prof. Huei Wang
National Taiwan University
Taipei, Taiwan

Current Status and Future Trends for Si and Compound MMICs in Millimeter-Wave Regime and Related Issues for System on Chip (SoC) and/or System in Package (SiP)

The talk will cover current and future trends of millimeter-wave MMICs, including those using III-V compound (GaAs, InP, GaN, etc.) and Si-based (CMOS, SiGe HBT and BiCMOS) MMIC technologies.  MMICs used to be applied to military and astronomy systems and have recently started to be utilized for civil applications, such as communications and automotive radars.  The evolution of IC technologies has enabled Si-based MMICs at over 100 GHz, even in standard bulk CMOS processes.  Since low-cost mass-production potential pushes forward the technology, a very high integration of circuit functions on a chip, such as RF, base-band circuitry, automatic-control for a steady operation, and maybe even the antenna, etc. should be included, and thus the system on chip (SOC) issues should be addressed, especially in MMW regime.

Prof. Joy Laskar
Georgia Institute of Technology

mmW CMOS/PCB Co-Designed Phased Array Technology

In this paper, we present the development of highly integrated mmW CMOS/PCB single-chip digital phased array solution, embedded in QFN package.

Applications include low power 60 GHz multi- gigabit radio addressing the needs of a multitude of bandwidth hungry wireless multimedia applications such as high definition streaming and massive side-loading.

The demonstrated solutions offer the lowest energy per bit transmitted wirelessly at multi-gigabit rates and meet the very stringent low-power specifications for portable consumer electronics.

Nicholas E. Buris
President
NEBENS

Cross-Layer Design of Smart Antenna Systems

A Cross-Layered design approach of Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) antenna systems is presented in this talk.  An electromagnetics exact formulation, which consists of full wave analyses of the antenna arrays on both sides of the link and a plane wave decomposition for the propagation environment, from baseband-to-baseband of a smart antenna system is given.  Subsequently, the baseband signals are fed into link simulators, specific for each system of interest, to provide estimates of the Bit Error Rate (BER) and throughput.  Calibration and channel estimation algorithms are described for Time Division Duplex (TDD) systems, such as the IEEE 802.16 (WiMAX).  The state of the art in designing antennas for terminals and for base stations, examples of actual product designs for WiMAX and IEEE 802.11n, and some recommendations on research topics to further the state of the art are presented.