Prof. Rappaport’s Group Attends IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference

Felix Gutierrez, Khursheed Hassan, James Murdock, and Prof. Ted Rappaport attended the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco, CA, February 7-10, 2010. This is one of the most prestigious conferences in the IEEE, bringing together thousands of industry, academic, and government representatives to present and learn about the latest developments in circuit design. The topics of the conference ranged from next-generation optical and electrical interfaces to advancements in micromechanical machines (MEMs). Prof. Rappaport and students were primarily interested in developments related to mm-wave radars, transceivers, antennas, and mm-wave circuit components such as power amplifiers and mixers. They plan to use what they learned while at the conference to improve their designs of mm-wave integrated radios and radio-components, and their goal is to present their own research at next year’s conference.

The papers and presentations of this year’s conference, the theme of which was “sensing the future,” signal the enormous potential of the 60 GHz systems being researched and developed by Prof. Rappaport’s lab. In particular, the recent work of Mr. Gutierrez and Mr. Hassan in developing 60 GHz integrated antennas will prove useful to the 60 GHz community. Many authors at the conference presented work related to 60 GHz, but few made use of integrated antennas because of the challenges that remain in making on-chip antennas cheap and effective. By overcoming these challenges, the group hopes to make a major contribution to the circuit community’s efforts to create completely integrated radios, radars, and sensors.

The chance to interact personally and discuss new and upcoming ideas with other attendees was an invaluable experience that will keep the group looking forward to next year.